HATCH Taps wondertouch's particleIllusion to Create 'Heavenly' CG Atmospheric Sequences on Warner Bros. Feature Film, "Constantine"

Award Winning Particle Effects Creation Software Now Fully Integrated Into Indie Studio Production Pipeline for Matte Painting and Compositing of Feature Film, Television and Commercial Visual Effects

ST. LOUIS (March 15, 2005) - wondertouch™, a leading developer of high performance visual effects software tools, today announced that HATCH, a Los Angeles-based independent design and production studio, has committed to wondertouch's award-winning particleIllusion™ particle effects creation tool to boost workflow significantly on a wide range of visual effects feature film, television, commercial and interactive projects; including the recently released Warner Bros. motion picture, "Constantine." Citing particleIllusion's intuitive processes, speed and real-time viewing capabilities, the HATCH visual effects team relied extensively on the software to complete dynamic atmospheric elements in a totally CG-generated sequence of heaven, considered one of the most visually engaging in the film.

particleIllusion has been an effects tool staple at HATCH for the past two years serving alongside Softimage XSI, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects as part of the motion graphics and effects mix to fashion complex atmospheric elements that add mood and texture to HATCH's signature-styled matte paintings and sophisticated multi-layered composites. particleIllusion has also played a key role previously at HATCH in the creation of a broad range of particle effects for high-profile feature films including "The Rundown," "The Manchurian Candidate," "Hellboy," "The Chronicles of Riddick," and "Blade: Trinity."

"Constantine," based on characters from the DC Comics/Vertigo Hellblazer Graphic Novels, tells the story of a man, portrayed in the film by actor Keanu Reeves, resurrected from death against his will and forced to patrol the earthly border between heaven and hell - hoping to find salvation by vanquishing the devil's foot soldiers. For the film, Deak Ferrand, lead visual effects designer/matte painter at HATCH was tasked to fashion a scene of Constantine stepping out of a room into heaven - directly into a bed of clouds in motion with a cityscape in the distance. This required integrating a live action element of Reeves who was shot against blue screen to simulate the cross over into heaven. Ferrand accessed particleIllusion's extensive library of pre-set super emitters which were then modified and later combined with multiple layers of Photoshop-painted cloud elements in After Effects to create the final composited shots.

"Integrating particleIllusion into the pipeline as our primary particle effects tool has been critical to the creative process. Having worked with the software on previous film projects, I was confident its ease-of-use, reliability and access to real-time viewing and lightning fast renders would allow us to deliver stunning imagery and successfully improve the turnaround time of our shots," said Ferrand.

"The visual effects team at HATCH has earned a reputation for bringing a unique visual style to some of today's most spectacular major motion picture visual effects sequences," said Alan Lorence, president of wondertouch. "HATCH's use in leveraging particleIllusion is a testament to the fact that wondertouch's software tools provide digital artists with fast, reliable and efficient particle effects solutions that are powerful and easy-enough to use in all stages of feature film production."

About particleIllusion

particleIllusion is a standalone particle effects application designed as an easy-to-use, low-cost, high performance tool to quickly and simply add particle effects to any image, animation, or video footage. particleIllusion features an ever-growing collection of hundreds of preset effects such as smoke, fire, explosions, water effects, sparkles, colorful artistic effects, and many others. particleIllusion features OpenGL hardware acceleration to provide real-time (or near real-time) previews of most effects and ultra-fast rendering of final output.

About HATCH

HATCH (www.hatchfx.com), based in Marina del Rey, was created in 2001 by Deak Ferrand and Cheryl Bainum. The studio designs and produces digital visual effects for films, television, commercials and interactive projects by using the latest techniques in digital matte painting, compositing and computer graphics. HATCH has provided visual effects for high profile films such as "Lord of the Rings," "Scorpion King," "The Rundown," "Hellboy," "The Chronicles of Riddick," "The Manchurian Candidate," and the upcoming "Skeleton Key." The company recently opened a subsidiary in Geneva Switzerland.

About wondertouch

wondertouch, headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., is an award-winning software developer specializing in particle effects for the visual effects industry. The company's flagship product, particleIllusion, a sprite-based particle effects application is focused towards the needs of creative professionals working in film post-production and pre-visualization, standard and HD video, commercial broadcast and Web graphics industries.

wondertouch software products are available directly from wondertouch. Additional information on wondertouch can be obtained on the Web at www.wondertouch.com.