Cool - the ever-smart Machinima.com has an in-depth interview with the South Park animators on how they made the recent World Of Warcraft episode of the long-running, scabrous cartoon series.

A bunch of the footage was filmed in-world thanks to extensive Blizzard co-operation, of course, and the animators explain: "We didn't have to set up our own server. Blizzard was kind enough to let us use the alpha server for their upcoming Burning Crusade expansion, so not only did we have a fairly controlled environment, we also got a sneak peek at the new goodies!"

As for how easy machinima in the game engine ended up being, they grin: "It was different for us to tackle the 3D animation shots versus the traditional 2D animation stuff that we do. It took three full weeks of production to produce the WOW episode and it takes us six day normally to put a South Park episode on the air. It is much easier to produce South Park style animation than the Machinima animation. Although if you gave us some time to figure it out, I'm sure we could. We have the fastest crew in Hollywood." [Via In-Between.]