The ILL Clan - Showtime Award Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Frank Dellario
The ILL Clan, Inc.
ph. 718-599-2591
illbixby@illclan.com

MTV2's Video Mods taps 3D game animation pioneers

Machinima Pioneers, the ILL Clan create animated interstitials for
MTV2's Video Game Mods show

New York (Oct 4, 2005) - The newest installment of MTV2's Video Mods, a program featuring animated music videos that take place in the latest 3D video games is featuring a series of animated short interstitials created by a group of animators widely acknowledged as pioneers of a new animation technique. Known to gamers through short movies distributed on the internet, Machinima (Machine + Cinema) is the method of using video game technology to create original animation. The ILL Clan made their first Machinima short in 1998, and have continued to innovate this nascent art form since.

Starting with the 1998 game, Quake (successor to id software's Doom series of games) the ILL Clan animators created a humorous cartoon in the normally violent 3D game. Since then they've gone on to use newer game technology, and even to reprogram the games to better suit their needs. Others have followed in the ILL Clan's footsteps, Red vs. Blue, a series set in the Xbox game Halo is another example of a widely known Machinima series on the internet. As Machinima has grown in popularity there is even a Machinima film festival held at New York's American Museum of the Moving Image.

MTV2's Video Mods has brought added attention to Machinima with it's appearance of in-game animation. "Imagine that when game characters aren't playing games, they're hanging out playing instruments in a band. That's Video Mods," says Alex Colletti, Executive Producer. Although Video Mods isn't technically Machinima, since the videos are created in 3D animation software Maya, as opposed to recorded in an actual game, the show has lended some notoriety to the technique. In September, Video Mods featured a machinima video recorded in the popular game Half-Life 2, created by Paul Marino, author of "The Art of Machinima," and a co-founder of the ILL Clan.

"What makes these newest shorts unique is that rather than create them using an existing game, such as Halo or Half-Life, the ILL Clan has created everything from scratch using a raw game engine," describes Alex Colletti." Matt Dominianni, Director and ILL Clan co-founder added, "we hack our own tools, and build our own 3D characters and environments. It looks like a game, but it's actually a virtual movie set and actors." The ILL Clan uses their own custom machinima toolset created in the Torque game engine by Garage Games.

It's no coincidence that the characters are thought of as virtual actors, since the ILL Clan controls each 3D animated character in real-time, like a puppet. In other words, their process is less like animation, and more like a film shoot in 3D game virtual reality. They even perform live in front of festival audiences. Their next performance will be the debut of their newest series at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival in New York this November.