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Machinima is a digital art form where innovative filmmakers create animated films in a 3D virtual environment. That virtual environment resides in the bits and bytes world of computer video games.

Here is a video from the machinima.com channel that explains What is Machinima



Where did the name Machinima come from
January 2000 saw the birth of the classification of this art form Machinima. Hugh Hancock and Anthony Bailey, two of the leading Quake filmmakers, came up with the the term by combining 'machine' and 'cinema' to make machinema. Hugh Hancock misspelled the word as Machinima and the name remains as it is today.

History of Machinima
When computer video games started appearing, the characters of video games were made up of sprites, a series of images that displayed the animated action of a game character. The development and improvement of computer video graphics technology has led to 3D video acceleration, which made possible the development of video games playing in a 3D virtual environment.

As a result of this technology, some innovative gamers began making short film using an in-game function called demo-recording. This function allowed the player to record their actions in the game and replay it. They also shared their demo-recordings with other gamers on the internet.

First exmaple of Machinima
In 1996 a Quake video game clan know as The Rangers created what is considered the first example of machinima. This was called Diary of a Camper and was orinially a demo-recording that could only be viewed by gamers who had the Quake game. Eventually Diary of a Camper was converted to a video file and was put on the internet so it could be viewed by anyone using a media player. Here is a link to the Diary of a Camper  on www.machinima.com

References

Website: http://jsclan.com/
Youtube Channel: Xanatos
Flickr: Xanatos TM Photostream
Face Book: Xanatos