ILL Clan
The ILL Clan was a machinima production team based in Brooklyn, New York City. One of the first of the "Machinima Clans," (originally they were a Quake gaming clan) they created their first short: Apartment Huntin' in 1997, and were one of the first to go on to produce professional machinima. Their most notable work to date appeared on CSI: NY on October 24, 2007, in episode "Down the Rabbit Hole" which the show follows a killer into Second Life.
The clan produced a number of machinima shorts, series and several live performances at film festivals, often interacting with the audience. Their work made heavy use of improvised dialogue. The team has been featured in numerous articles in print and other media.[1] They are considered innovators of the technique, and were called "Machinima Masters" by Wired Magazine in 2005.
At the time of Apartment Huntin's production in 1996, the methods of digital animation and video production were expensive and complicated. There were no consumer non-linear video editing software suites such as iMovie or Final Cut Pro available, and Flash had yet to be released. Machinima movies at the time were recorded as a .demo file, which was a text file containing all the 3D coordinates of the objects within the Quake game engine. The movie was released as a .demo file that could only be played back in real-time within the Quake game engine. The ILL Clan is notable for being the first group of animators to make extensive use of real-time 3D game technology for custom developed animation.
In 2007 the members of the ILL Clan joined Electric Sheep Company, a virtual world design studio, serving as their machinima division recording mostly in the virtual world of Second Life. They produced numerous machinima for clients such as CBS, NBC, Paramount, Universal, MTV, IBM and more. They produced animation for the CSI: NY episodes 405 "Down the Rabbit Hole" and 415 "Doa for a Day" where the shows characters followed clues of a murder in the virtual world of Second Life.
The ILL Clan continued to make machinima until 2009.
Members
Team members have nicknames mimicking famous persons or fictional characters whose names begin with either "Will" or "Bill," and subsequently dropping the first letter, in favor of "ill." Some members are no longer active in the group.
Founding Members:
- Frank Dellario (ILL Bixby): Cofounder, president, producer, virtual camera
- Matt Dominianni (ILL Clinton): Cofounder, creative director, voice-actor/puppeteer, writer
- Paul Marino (ILL Robinson) – Cofounder, director, producer, animator
- Manu Smith (ILL Smith): Cofounder, audio engineer, foley artist
Additional Members:
- Tom Donnelly (ILLy Bob Thornton): Cofounder, Post Effects, Machinima
- Paul Jannicola (ILL Spector): Cofounder, Voice actor/puppeteer, Sound Engineer, Writer, Composer, virtual camera
- John Olinyk (ILL Rogers): Voice actor/puppeteer, writer
- Patrick O'Shaughnessey (ILL Gibson): Lead programmer, puppeteer
- Kerria Seabrooke (ILL Kim): Cofounder, Writer, Director, voice-actor, story editor
Filmography
- Apartment Huntin' (Directed by Matt Dominianni) (1998)
- Hardly Workin' (Directed by Paul Marino)(2000)
- Common Sense Cooking with Carl the Cook (2003) – performed live at the 2003 Florida Film Festival
- 6 Minutes with Mike Whitely'' (2003) – performed live at the 2003 Machinima Film Festival
- Lenny and Larry on the Campaign Trail series (2004) – (Directed by Matt Dominianni)
- TrashTalk with ILL Will series (2006) – (Directed by Matt Dominianni)
- The Grid Review series (2007) – (Directed by Kerria Seabrooke)
- Down the Rabbit Hole episode of CSI: NY (aired October 24, 2007)
- DOA for a Day episode of CSI: NY (aired April 2, 2008)
- Tiny Nation (Directed by Kerria Seabrooke) 2008
References
External links
- The ILL Clan
- The Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences
- An interview regarding the Electric Sheep acquisition
- Tiny Nation