“Awesome Reach” by Arin Hanson

The anonymous Brew reader who submitted Awesome Reach wrote, “I thought the animation here was wonderfully grotesque and over-the-top,” and I agree. The one-minute short, celebrating the release of the video game Halo: Reach, was created by Arin “Egoraptor” Hanson.

There are a lot of wildly talented, self-taught animators who post work on Newgrounds, and while they sometimes achieve micro-celebrity status on the site, their work remains completely unknown to the animation community, and moreover, the general public. A lot of that has to do with Newgrounds itself; the signal-to-noise ratio on the site makes it impossible for an outsider to discover anything worthwhile. Hopefully, artists with as much talent as Arin can break out and achieve the broader recognition (and financial rewards) they deserve.