Dray86



Sorry for the mistakes this article may contain, Dray ;-; Much of this article was written and left unaltered prior to the most recent edit, however few sections were edited with some unconfirmed information on 10/18/18. I thought I was pretty sure that I hadn't stated anything that you didn't explicitly say yourself, so hopefully you were referring to the previous edit - I hope to polish up your bio to be as full and sexy and whatnot.

Dray86 is a 32-33 year old animator and former Global Maplestory player from New Zealand and moved to Melbourne, Australia June 25th 2012 to work in his new job position as a systems engineer at a technology firm whilst finishing his Maple Kombat series. He has stated on his discord server on September-October 2018 that Maple Kombat 9 is 70-80% complete and is collaborating with six other animators - DeityZiex, spritefan2, Min, Jaws, Drew and Cynarchy. This is the highest number of collaborators assisting with animation in a Maple Kombat episode thus far. It is known that Jr Madness and Lance continue to help him by creating custom poses. He currently has over 57,000 subscribers on Youtube, and is the highest subscribed Maplestory animation youtube channel. He has held 70,000 subscribers at one point, but most of them were removed for inactivity(That damn Google).

History
At 16 years of age, Dray worked at KFC and promoted to a cashier position due to being friendly, however he always wanted to be a cook there. He moved out of home at age 18 to go to university.

Dray86 began creating Maplestory Videos for his Scania guild UndiePatrol back in 2006. These included guild runs, boss runs, comedic edits of gameplay footage, etc.

He recorded gameplay videos with fraps and edited them with Adobe Premiere. His boss videos in particular became extremely popular.

With his nonanimated Maplestory gameplay videos, he became extremely well known.

In 2007, spritefan2 created the first Maplestory animation in 2007: Mapling Times 1. Like other maple animators, they feature their maplestory friends, real life friends and other animators as characters in their series.

A few months after this upload, Dray was inspired to animate Maple Kombat. He had no experience with flash nor animation, but was inspired of an idea where two friends fought to the death. Despite this challenge, he was committed with his story in mind, and used bannedstory to animate his characters behind a green screen and recorded the footage using fraps. He imported this footage to edit in Adobe Premiere to edit Maple Kombat 1 which stands at over 1.1 million views. It remains the highest viewed Maple Kombat video. With Dray's fanbase already decently large, he expanded the popularity of Bannedstory videos and the Maplestory game much more. Spritefan2's Mapling Times would eventually give rise to maple music videos, maple fight animations and other animated maple stories. [Pun partially intended]

Dray had no plans for Maple Kombat beyond the first episode. He received many fan messages asking about future episodes. Despite having no plans for a sequel, he created Maple Kombat II and III and created the characters of Grendel the Really Old, Manji, and Tiger. The popularity of Maple Kombat continued to soar. It was the point of no return. He realized he needed a good story. At this point, he formulated the entire story of Maple Kombat which from Maple Kombat I to Maple Kombat X. As such, he uploaded his Maple Kombat 300 years ago special which first featured the idea of the 4 earings. In Maple Kombat 4, he utilized a particle effects system. He used flash animation for the first time in Maple Kombat 7.

Dray86's Maple Kombat with "fight to the death" action and inspired Dragonball Z storyline and elements along with spritefan2's random, silly, "immature" humor in Mapling Times are among the most popular of bannedstory animation series.

Dray86 had animation assistance from DeityZiex and SpriteFan2 in the latest two of his Maple Kombat episodes. Min, Jaws, Drew, Cynarchy, DeityZiex and spritefan2 are assisting with the animation of Maple Kombat 9. There will be a Maple Kombat 10. Maple Kombat 9 will be the most action packed.

There are 8 Maple Kombat episodes. Maple Kombat 8 was released in 2012. As of September-October 2018, Maple Kombat 9 is 70-80% done, according to a message he sent on his discord server. After Maple Kombat 9 is uploaded, he will reupload Maple Kombat 8 on youtube with royalty-free music to avoid a copyright strike. Maple Kombat 9 will also use music with acquired licenses or royalty-free permissions.

Click here if you want to see his channel

Copyright Problems
Dray86 currently has two strikes for Copyright, one strike was for containing content owned by EMI (Electric & Musical Industries Ltd.) in his video called: What ever happened to Syrupface? [ dray86 ]. Another strike was for containing content owned by WMG (Warner Music Group) in one of his recent Maple Kombat episodes.

Maple Kombat VIII
The progress of this episode began somewhere in March 2010, when he had the motivation to make it. The production over time was really slow, his fans became impatient at the end of the year. Dray86 only had 10% of it done in that year due to inactivity. In 2011, Dray86 had only 65% of the episode done. In 2012, the episode was finished within the remaining progress of 35%.

Trailer
In December 19th 2011, just when the episode Maple Kombat VII was already 2 years old, he uploaded a trailer which he made in a several hours, the trailer was basically scrolling along a path in the cave that leads to the Statue. A few seconds later, the statue makes a zap aiming at the ground which later reveals Dray and Rizzo with their new pair of wings that Butters' has. In the trailer the statue does not say "Your wish is granted..." Those pair of wings weren't seen throughout the episode. the scene later fades out into white, later to black. The later part of the trailer unveils the title of Maple Kombat VIII. When the title disappeared, it showed the release date of Jan-Feb 2012 at the last seconds of the trailer. Click here if you want to see the trailer

Sneak Peeks
From August 2011 to Feburary 2012, Dray86 has been showing his fans only 4 sneak peeks from the episodes on his Facebook page, the first one shows only Manji standing on a cliff of the El Nath outskirt landscapes.

The next sneak peek which was released in September, showed only Dray who was about to destroy his Evil clone in the Luck Test.

The next sneak peek which was released in Feburary, showed only Dray and Rizzo running away from Buttercast's icy tomb in the outskirts of El Nath.

The last sneak peek which was released only 3 days before Maple Kombat VIII's release on YouTube, It only showed how much progress of sound Dray86 has done for the eighth episode.

Dray uploads screenshots and sneak peeks occasionally on his discord to patrons. All patron benefits are awarded to all patrons of any amount, regardless. They see Maple Kombat 9 earlier than the public, are referenced in the credits, see sneak peeks and have a private channel on his discord server. Non-patrons may interact with Dray on his discord server.

Re-cap and Release
On Feburary 9th 2012, He uploaded a re-cap video that he did a few weeks earlier, this re-cap was originally attached to Maple Kombat VIII to make it a half-hour long video, but then Dray decided to upload it to YouTube 4 days before Maple Kombat VIII was released. When dray finally finished Maple Kombat VII after over 25 months worth of waiting, he uploaded the episode on YouTube on Feburary 13th 2012.

Copyright takedown
On March 10th 2012, Maple Kombat VIII was marked as copyright infringement by WMG, Dray86 also complied with the requested sent by WMG so he had to delete the Maple Kombat episode before he lost his channel along with his videos. His fans were upset about this and started making hate comments about WMG, when Dray86 was making a message about this on his YouTube channel, his Facebook page, and in his three recent videos. He also posted on Facebook the request sent by WMG he complied to.

Re-upload on Facebook
On April 9th 2012 (on Easter Monday), Dray86 re-uploaded Maple Kombat VIII on his Facebook page which was split into 2 parts. He wanted to make his fans happy by doing this. Dray86 knew that Facebook would be a better place to re-upload it, making it less likely for it to be taken down. Click here if you want to see the episode there

Re-upload to YouTube
On July 27th 2016, he announced to re-upload the episode to YouTube with Royalty-free music, alongside the official announcement for Maple Kombat IX

Controversies
The below controversy has been dismissed by Dray86 on discord with an F2.

There are several scenes from Maple Kombat that appear influenced by spritefan2's work. Maple Kombat II (released July 15th 2007) at 6:20, Manji kills random people as he heads to Sleepywood.

In Mapling Times 3 (released March 16th 2007) at 7:30, the character Robby kills many random characters at a time. As you can see at the release dates, spritefan2 released Mapling Times 3 around four months earlier than Maple Kombat II.

When comparing the two similar scenes, some of the people they encounter are very similar as well (2 people who are in love, one gets killed, other panics in both). Also when spritefan2 himself appears in Maple Kombat and his line in that episode ends with "nvm i'm logging off" which was also done by spritefan2 before-hand in his episode 2 of Mapling Times when Tiger and SilencerX were fighting.

Other Controversies
There have been other similiarites pointed out as well. The flash animator and current dray86 collaborator JrMadness had created a video pointing out other similarities in the 2 series. This video is now removed.

Also, in 2008 spritefan2 released a video called, "Mapling Times 6" the first 6 seconds it appears to be the video but it's interrupted by a Rickroll.

Spritefan2 had only kept the video up shortly, but right after, Dray released a video called "Maple Kombat VI?? [dray86]" which did the same exact thing as spritefan2's Mapling Times 6.

By an unkown, his fake Maple Kombat VI?? video that remained intact (which was later made private), may be deleted.