What spec machine(s) are you using it on at the moment?

One AMD 2Ghz, one AMD 1Ghz, three Celeron 500Mhz (for rendering) and one P3 700Mhz, all with 64MB GeForce graphics cards and a total of 3GB ram. We also have an AMIGA 500 with 1MB expansion. For nostalgia only.

Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

God save SkyTracer, HyperVoxel and Virtual Darkroom! In Modeler we find BandGlue, SmoothShift and BandSaw very useful. Morph Mixer is great too!

In your opinion: Integrated or Separated? :)

Separated. No doubt. As we said before, it gives a cool feeling. It's just like two different studios, from one room to another room. It helps to keep the mind on different things without confusing them.

Tell me about your music video?

The video was made for a song Gianni wrote two years ago. In that period Ectonull didn't exist yet. We were just doing some tests with the Discovery Edition version of LW 7.5. Gianni's producer saw those tests and commissioned us to make the video! It was our very first work!

So you make all the music for your animations as well?

Yes, we make all our own original music, jingles and soundtracks.

Is the heart logo DJ Mowack's standard symbol, or is it something you guys came up with?

DJ Mowack (Gianni's alter ego) had no logo when he did the song. The heart came out during a brain-storming session with the producer. Someone was talking about this big heart in the middle of the scene. It was a very inspiring image for us, so we built it for the scene and used it as the logo later. So yes, we can say that it's an original logo we created for DJ Mowack.

What are you working on now?

We are working on a project for an Italian/African association. It has social purpose and it is concerned about development in Ghana. We are developing a character for them.
We decided to try to use another approach in social communication, using a quite funny way to introduce serious problems and situations (the association has an orphanage in Ghana too; we think we could talk about it making people smile a little bit, asking them for help in a different way).
Then, from one of the first shorts we wrote, modelled and animated, we are building another short, more complex but with the same atmosphere and characters, based on the concepts expressed in the science fiction movies of the fifties, the short is a parody of that particular kind of movie (for example "The day the earth stood still" by Robert Wise). In black and white, of course.

How did you get involved with the Italian/African association?

In a funny way. We were in a "Rosticceria" (a particular kind of restaurant, something like a pizzeria) and we met a friend of ours that we hadn't seen for 12 years!

We asked him: "What are you doing now?" and he answered "I'm a professor in the university here in Rome, department of communication and I'm the director of "MEWE" foundation that helps African children. And you? What are you doing now?"

We answered: "Well, we make puppets!" and he replied: "Great! Let's work together!"

So we started working for "MEWE" and for the university too.

We are doing a presentation of the foundation (and of Ectonull too), a 15-minute animation that was broadcast on 2nd June.

We collaborate with the university for this project; we try to understand if serious ideas (like helping children in Africa) could be presented in a funny way.