FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact:
Frank Dellario
The ILL Clan, Inc.
ph. 718-599-2591 illbixby@illclan.com
3D Characters
to Co-host Awards Gala before Live Audience
at Film Festival
New York Based Animation Studio Pioneers Real-Time Animation
Process By Combining 3D-Game Technology With Traditional Cinema Techniques
Orlando (March 11, 2004) - The 2004 Florida Film
Festival will feature the return of the ground breaking New
York based animation and computer game development studio, the ILL
Clan, Inc. Using a powerful new animation technique known
in the computer gaming industry as Machinima, the
ILL Clan's animated characters, Larry & Lenny Lumberjack will
share the stage with Peg O’Keef, the (human) host of the Florida
Film Festival award gala. The animated characters will be controlled
and voiced by the ILL Clan performers and will interact in real-time
with the award presenters and the audience.
The process of Machinima (Machine
+ Animation) is known among gamers and internet users through downloadable
movies made entirely within popular computer games such as Quake,
Halo, or Battlefield 1942. "We have experience in the film and
television industries and the game industry, so using game technology
to make our movies just made sense," says Frank Dellario, President
and co-founder of the Brooklyn based startup. The ILL Clan helped
to pioneer Machinima with their Award winning shorts, Hardly Workin'
(2000) and their live performance Common Sense Cooking at the 2003
Florida Film Festival.
As part of the NextArt program
at the Orlando based Florida Film Festival, Paul Marino of the Academy
of Machinima Arts and Sciences will present a retrospective of Machinima's
short history from it's first appearance in 1998 in the form of "Quake
Movies" to present day favorites made with the latest visually
stunning 3D games. Most games of the first-person-shooter genre, like
their predecessor Doom by id software, feature extremely violent,
realistic 3D graphics. "Our background is in comedy and animation,
so for our first movie we made slight modifications to the character
models that came with Quake, and used it to make a comedy." Describes
Matt Dominianni, Machinima Director, and co-founder of the ILL Clan.
Today the group uses custom designed graphics, and has even reprogrammed
the game technology to allow for camera editing and lip-synching.
Now, game technology has advanced
far enough to allow the animators to begin to fulfill on their original
vision for real-time animation. "The game technology of 2004
is vastly superior to what Machinima makers had available to them
just 5 years ago." Says Paul Marino. "Today's 3D games are
visually coming closer to high-end computer animated films such as
Toy Story. Given this, a truly talented Machinima team can produce
a movie using a $50 off-the-shelf computer game, a few laptops, and
a lot of hard work."
The ILL Clan will be performing
the latest episode of their new show, Lenny & Larry on the Campaign
Trail, live for the festival audience as part of this year's NextArt
program. In this special live "Florida Town Hall" edition
of "Six Minutes with Mike Whitely" Lenny and Larry will
present their campaign platform directly to the people of the Florida
Film Festival, and Mike will invite the audience to ask questions
of the candidates. "And unlike the actual candidates, you can
ask them anything you want, and they'll give you an honest answer,"
promises Matt Dominianni, animator and voice of Lenny Lumberjack.
Contact and Interviews:
Frank Dellario
Company: The ILL Clan, Inc.
Website: http://www.illclan.com
Title: President
Phone: 718-599-2591
Email: illbixby@illclan.com
Orlando (March 11, 2004)