My buddy Frank Dellario, founder of the legendary Ill Clan machinima filmmaking crew, talked with me today about the recent announcement that for the first time a major motion picture was going to use Valve's Source game engine to create animations.
For those of us who have been following the growth of the art of machinima, this is the first time that machinima will be used to create digital animations for a motion picture. Previously, machinima has been used to create animations for television shows like "CSI", which the Ill Clan worked on. And machinima has been shown in documentaries like "Login 2 Life" and for special TV productions like "When Strangers Click." But never in a major-release film.
Frank talks about the larger implication of a film using a game engine to create animations, as well as the Valve Steam online system to distribute the film. Definitely a lot of interesting food for thought for anyone interested in machinima, the film industry, and how digital effects are produced.
