Flint Dille

Flint Dille (born November 3, 1955) is an American screenwriter, game designer, and novelist. He is best known for his animated work on Transformers, G.I. Joe, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and his game-writing, The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, and Dead to Rights, as well as his non-fiction book written with John Zuur Platten.^[1]

Personal background

Dille was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Robert Crabtree and Virginia Nichols Dille. He attended Glenbrook South High School. In 1977, he graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a Bachelor's degree in Ancient History and Classical Rhetoric. He received a Master of Fine Arts in Professional Writing (Cinema) from the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Flint Dille is the grandson of John F. Dille,^[2] publisher of the original Buck Rogers comic strip, and is part of the Dille Family Trust, which owns the rights to the character.^[3]

Professional background

After grad school, Dille worked as a freelance script reader, production assistant, and assistant art director before getting his first writing job from Joe Ruby at Ruby/Spears as a Saturday Morning Development writer. This led to writing scripts for Mr. T., The Puppy, and RoboForce. Later, Dille went to work for Sunbow Productions and served in various capacities as Writer, Story Editor, Associate Producer, Co-Producer on several shows, including Transformers (Generation 1), G.I. Joe, Inhumanoids and Visionaries. After that, Dille worked briefly at CBS on the in-house production of Garbage Pail Kids, before working with Amblin Entertainment on several projects, including An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Tiny Toons (as a movie), and We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story.

TSR and Dungeons & Dragons

Dille met Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, while Gygax was in Hollywood and they began collaborating on a number of projects, including the Sagard the Barbarian gamebook series (1985-1986), which was published by Pocket Books.^[4]:18 They also collaborated on The Sceptre of Seven Souls. Dille co-authored a script with Gygax for a Dungeons & Dragons film; however, the film was never made.^[5] Dille introduced his sister Lorraine Williams to Gygax at Gygax's request.^[5][6] TSR was having hard times financially, and she was suggested as both a potential investor and as a skilled manager, and she was brought in to TSR as Vice President and Administration.^[4]:18 In 1989, TSR made an expansion out to the west coast to get D&D back onto the television and into movies; Dille ran this new department, which was called TSR West.^[4]:23 Dille was able to get the boardgame A Line in the Sand (1991) published the same day the US bombing started in the first Gulf War, as he was able to convince the president of the company to make things move quickly.^[4]:23 The Buck Rogers roleplaying game XXVc began at TSR West, but Dille could not finish it so it was shipped back east.^[4]:23

For the rest of the 1980s, Dille focused on animation writing and game writing and design. At TSR Dille also worked on Dragonstrike where he wrote and Directed the Video which was an early example of a 'hybrid' film, containing blue screen and digital backgrounds and animation. Dille also directed several audio Interactive discs, including First Quest, Karameikos, Red Steel and Planescape. The TSR Audio Disc: Terror T.R.A.X: Track of the Vampyre, was later re-done as a CD-ROM by Groliers, directed by Flint Dille and programmed by Peter Marx and Evolutionary Publishing.

Dille co-wrote the Agent 13: The Midnight Avenger series of novels and graphic novels with David Marconi, and also the Buck Rogers XXVC comic modules Rude Awakening.^[7]

Interactive Games

Dille's career shifted to interactive games in the late 80's when he worked on several projects for the Sega CD platform, including Double Switch, Maximum Surge and Corpse Killer. At that point, Dille then worked on Soviet Strike and Nuclear Strike for Electronic Arts, writing the videos and completed a transition from paper games and products to video games.

Dille won "Story of the Year" for his work on The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and on Dead to Rights.^[8] Dille was the writer for other video games, including Fantastic Four 2, Teen Titans, Superman Returns, James Bond: Tomorrow Never Dies, Soviet Strike, and Nuclear Strike.^[8]

Frank Miller

Dille is a close friend of comics creator Frank Miller; "Frank and I met during what I call our 'professional adolescence' when he was doing the Dark Knight and I was doing the Transformers cartoon series," says Dille, "and we've been great friends ever since."^[8] Dille was selected to spearhead the design, scriptwriting, story generation, and overall production of a video game adaptation of Miller's Sin City for Red Mile Entertainment.^[8][9] Miller planned to direct a Buck Rogers film, with Dille as producer,^[10] but this project was scrapped in 2009.^[11]

Ingress

Google revealed Flint Dille to be the creative lead of alternate reality, geomobile game Ingress on All Tech Considered, an NPR radio segment.^[12] The project operates as if it isn't a game, presenting itself as reality at Wyrd Con 2014.^[13] At ComiCon 2014 Dille spoke on the panel "Story Worlds: The Alchemy of Franchise Creation." Using his experience with Ingress, he explained the way different medias are growing interconnected.^[14]

Niantic Labs

Niantic Labs spun out of Google in 2015, although Google remained a major backer.^[15] Dille was revealed to be leaving Google with Niantic Labs and continuing in his position as Creative Lead.^[16]

Autocracy

Recently Flint Dille completed a Transformers graphic novel trilogy, Autocracy, with Chris Metzen and Livio Ramondelli. The series follows the origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron one million years before they arrive on Earth.^[17]

Transportopia

At TechWeek LA, Dille unveiled Transportopia, which he describes as turning the entire city of Los Angeles into a massively-multiplayer online game as an attempt to change our relation to the city and "move us outside of our bubbles."^[18]

Other projects

Dille co-wrote and co-executive produced Dimension's 2005 horror film Venom.^[8]

Dille also taught an Alternate Reality Game Design class at UCLA film school, Winter Semester 2011.^[19]

Video games

• Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu^[20]
• Sagard the Barbarian Interactive Gamebook series with E. Gary Gygax^[6][21]
• Dead to Rights^[22]
• Wheelman^[23]

Screenwriting

• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West^[24]
• The Transformers: The Movie (1986)^[25]
• Visionaries: Knights of the Magical Light (several episodes)

Critical reception

Regarding Dille's script for Fievel Goes West, critic Cliff Terry wrote, "Screenwriter Flint Dille has provided a story that is frenetic and fast-paced—in the end, too hyper, too cluttered—with some decidedly dark touches that, conceivably, could have undertones of the Holocaust. To lighten things up, Dille periodically tosses in bits of relatively sophisticated humor. At one point, the desert is described as 'a million-acre catbox,' there are references to espresso and endive, and when Miss Kitty cuts out on Tiger, she purrs—Casablanca-like: 'We'll always have the Bronx. Here's lookin' at you, kid.'"^[26]

Published works

• Dille, Flint; Platten, John Zuur (2008). The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design. Los Angeles, CA: Lone Eagle. ISBN 1-58065-066-X. 

References

External links

• Flint Dille at the Internet Movie Database
• G.I. Joe Interview - Flint Dille