68 - Hal Hickel - ILM VFX Animator - Toy Story, Rango, The Phantom Menace, Rogue One etc

Welcome to episode sixty eight of the Film we Mentor's podcast. This is Jamie Benning talking to you here from my house in southeast London. Though we are talking of moving. Actually the proximity to airports and the big smoke is becoming less and less appealing. It's February twenty twenty three.

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There are more out there. Okay, So for this episode, number fifty eight, I spoke with an animator at IM, namely How Hickle. Now, if you're on Twitter, you'll know that How is a prolific Twitter I've had a number of conversations with him online and recently, in one conversation, it transpired that How had done some of the work on the two thousand and four version of Star Wars and you hope to some of you, particularly on the redone Jabber scene, which was in itself a redo of the nineteen ninety seven special edition release. My friend Drew of Star Wars Visual Comparisons due check out his Twitter and his sight. He goes into major depth about all the difference between the versions of the films, and he's the world's leading expert and all this stuff.

Saw that we were talking about this, you know, something that we've talked about for a while, and he was in on the conversation, So I thought, why don't I approach How to come on the podcast and talk about that scene, as well as many of the other films he's worked on over the years. Looking at my notes here for the keywords that I'll add to the podcast upload. We talk about toy Story, Jurassic Park, Rogue one, the Life aquatic, and many many more in between. So here's my chat with how Hickle, visual effects animator, and I'll be back at the end for a bit more jabbering on how so I read that age twelve, you were a kid who wrote a letter to Lucasfilm outlining a sequel. But where did the love for Star Wars first begin?

Was it that first nineteen seventy seven showing in your local cinema? Yeah? Absolutely. I let's see, I was twelve or thirteen, I guess, so spring of seventy seven, so twelve. Actually, I think sometimes I've said thirteen to people, but when they think about it, it was actually twelve thirteen later that summer, and we lived in a little tiny town in Colorado that was not close to any movie theater, so it was quite a you know, it was a good hour or more dry for us to get to a theater, but we would make it down for big event films like Jaws first, so you know, I'm closer counters somethings like that.

Did you see Joe's when you attend? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, And we were again, I was in Colorado, so I was pretty much as far from the ocean as you could be, but we had a lake out of property and I I just couldn't go swimming in it. Will there was no rat, you know, a rational reason. N Yeah, leaned there were no sharks.

Yes, I was scared of the ball off towards you. But we made the trek down the same theater actually to see UM Star Wars. It was a big cinerama theater, so a big curve screen and my recollections. We got there a little late and we had to sit quite close to the fronts, not baby in the front row, but you know, closer than my parents would have liked. And so that opening shot of the star destroyer overhead, you know, it was extra impressive for twelve year old me because I was already interested in stop motion and filmmaking at that point.

I was thinking had a super camera, was making a little stop motion films at home. Um. But that film really just brought my whole interest in visual effects into all the areas you know, miniature photography, map painting. When I would read about it afterward, because I wanted to know how, you know, how did they do the chasm inside that death star where over one turns off the tractor beam? How did they do Luke's land speed or how did they do the lightsabers?

Did they? You know? I wanted to know all of it, and so I really just kind of took me from being interested in one specific little aspect of special facts stop motion, and I got we interested in special effects generally and actually filmmaking generally, because prior to that I was interested in I would say it was interested in filmmaking, but not as seriously as I became after Star Wars, where I really started to think more about how films were structured and edited things like that than I had really considerable sport. So yeah, and then and then you write and then you wrote this letter to Lucas Film famously explain that I read that they were going to make a sequel, and so I helpfully sent off my twelve, well bay Van, I think probably thirteen year old ideas on what the sequel should be, with a with a you know, request to work on it myself and offer my services, you know, for free if needed.

And I got back a very kind reply from, of all people, the producer's assistant buddy also, which at the time didn't impress me. I would just a little let down that they didn't want to use my stuff. Great, um, but you know, later years I kept a letter. Of course, in the later years I would look at it thinking, well, now, how in the heck did the producer's assistant have time to um reply to fan letters? I mean, there must have been dayluged with fan chucklo must coming in from all into the world.

And then I actually had the pleasure of at least e meeting money years later, actually, I ranted to her on LinkedIn, of all places. I told her the story. She was really tickled by it, and she said, well, she just that was something she enjoyed doing, and she did as much of it. She replied to as many fan letters as she was able to up until they had to leave for England for filming of Empire Strikes Back. And then then she had to hand it all off to whoever run the sand clob or whatever.

But um, so I was just super fortunate and then let her head. Hasn't a nice uh well, here hou's off to get the letter. I really I really should just have this thing ready when if I'm doing starting to people, but it's on this nice Ralph mcquarie let her head the late the old Ralph letsa head lego. Yeah, it's great, and it's type written, it's not printed, it's it's you know. She had rolled the paper and a typewriter and typed it up for me.

Anyways, years later, when we were having a rap breakfast for um Phantom Menace, Uh, George was there and people start bringing up little bits of things for him to sign, which is not something anyone would would narily do working with him, but this was kind of a celebration and he seemed very good natured about it. And so Rop Coleman, who was the animation director on the prequels, said, oh, because I had this letter hanging in my cubicle, s good go get letter. And I was like now and I was like, yeah, so enjoy it. So I got it. And one of the things that the letter says is getting into movies requires a certain combination of talent and luck.

And so George, you know, I put the letter down and he read it and kind of chuckled him any underlined talent and luck and wrote you have it and then signed there. Wow, that's great closing the circle or me for after you know, thirteen year old me. Anyways, that's great. I got to meet George once. I didn't ask him for results little jupidly I should have done.

I've in fact, i've seen him a few times because he's a motor sport fan of course, so I used to se him on the Fremione quite a lot. One day I just approached him. He's very it's very sweet, and we had a little chat. But anyway, yes, it's not about me. But then you'll your next step was what to try and get into a school that was film related.

Yeah, I had. There was a terrific article about the visual effects on on Star Wars actually and close Encounters in a magazine called Center Fantastic, and it was a double issue. And it's funny because I've run into various people John Noels one of them over the years who have that same issue, still have the copy they had, like I do. Old Dog eared and warren't because it was such a good article and it had too much good information, and especially if at a time period you know, pre centiffects, pre Internet anyways, and one of the great things about the article was that they did interviews with lots of people on the crew, not just you know, not just Dikestra and one or two others, but all kinds of people.

And one of those Adam Beckett, and of Beckett had headed up the animation effects on the film, So lightsaber's laser blasts things like that, And in fact he had animated himself the all the little electrical arts to crawl over our cho when the jaw was zapped him, and that and shot. It really caught my eye and piqued my interest. And so in his little interview you mentioned, it was mentioned that he had gone to the California Institute of the Arts. I'm the line CEA of californis about forty five store at the La M So I set my sights on going there. And unlike a sensible person who would prepare a portfolio and send out applications to a bunch of schools hoping that they get into one of them, I just sent stuff to cal Arts.

OPI exit. That's it. I just let all into one basket and it and unfortunately I got in because I didn't really have a plan b I might have ended up working in a grocery store, so which is fine, but you know, I got I was fortunate, and I had a great mentor there Jules Ingol was my mentor at the school, and I was in the film graphics program. They haven't sort of what people call the Disney School because Walt Disney had a hand in setting it up, but which is sort of their character animation school, and I didn't go there because I was really more just in visual effects than you know, cartoon animation, so to what it's called their film graphics program, and it was more experimental animation. It's great.

It's a great school, still is. And one of the great things about CalArts is that it's multiple disciplines. So you know, there's an acting there's a drama school, there's fine arts, there's music, you know, and live action, filmmaking, animation, so you know, if you need voice talent for an animated film you're doing, you can go to the drama school and need music. You can go there and find a student who wants to collaborate with you, and you're just sort of immersed in all these you know, crazy people in there. They're different areas of interest.

So I loved it. It's great school. And that lines you up, doesn't it, I guess for the sort of collaborative nature of what you ended up doing as well. And then yeah, very much. And you ended up working for an effects company early on in the eighties as well, didn't you.

Yeah, it was so. At the time when I left cal Arts, I was really very interested in this particular area of effects at that time. Nowadays we just called motion graphics, but it encompassed things like the slit scan star gate sequence in two thousand and one, but also stuff like I mentioned before in the animated effects on Our R two and things like that, and so it straddled two worlds, the visual effects but also sort of broadcast graphics. We're using a lot of those kinds of effects at that time to do these kind of glittering, shiny, streaky, luminous titles and things, and I was very interested in those processes. And it just happened that a shop opened up back up in Portland where I was from and needed help, and tiny little outfit they just it was served two or three people time I joined, and so I went there and it was a good first step.

I was there for four years, which is really too long because I kind of got everything I could get out of that job in a couple of years. And I didn't like the boss and so I kind of stayed there too long, but you know, lesson learned. But then what happened was right about the time I had a real put together, you know, I had had some work under rebuilt. What I wanted to do was go back down in LA to work for bigger houses doing that same kind of work, and or gas effects companies or both, you know, freelance around. But there had been a big transformation this would have been.

So I left cal Arts and eighty three and it was now eighty seven, and a big transformation had happened in that whole area of broad as graphics, and they stopped being done with photochemical motion graphics. Working were now being done digitally, and some with proper three dcg by then, but most of them with this kind of digital toolkit called an Ampex ado AMPEC to digital Optics in it made to my eye this kind of cheap looking, harsh looking digital graphics. But they could fly titles around and they would do these page turns in different effects. But they were all in this kind of term key hardware box that was sold by Amphics, and so all the pretty looking at most graphics stuff that I had seen and was inspired by was sort of gone, and it was this kind of other thing, and companies were all moving chairs around and you know, shriking and going some of going out of business.

Others were changing your business, buying new equipment and all that. So it was a bad time to I went down at one point kind of shot my real around, but it just was bad timing. But what was happening back up in Forland was litlvit. The studio was was blowing up. They were a stop motion studio.

There had been for that quite tiny and unknown, but now they were doing the California Raisins commercials, which were kind of a blip on the cultural radar of the nineteen eighties, and they were these little clay raising characters singing motown tunes and that was advertising. But them for the California Raising Advisory Board, which sold ravens, was there like a longer version of those commercials, because I'm sure we're here in the UK there was like a like what we did film version or something. Yeah. Yeah. So so right around the time I started, they were still doing commercial series, but then they embarked on several animated half hour specials for ABC.

So one of them was called the Raisins and it was sort of styled on a It was a mockumentary as if this beginning, I mean the Raisins were sort of like the Deedles, and you know, they kind of charted their rise to success, etc. And then there was a second one called Raisins Sold Out. And then and then we continued to make some specials that weren't raising related. We did a Halloween special called Comedy of Four Claymation Comedy of Fours, and an Easter special, Yeah, and an Easter special. So we did those four I think we did in the other and then alongside those we kept doing tens and cents of commercials, which was the bread and butter of the studio at the tiny and so I was there for six and a half years and it was great.

It was a nice, medium sized studio and we all learned for each other and it was kind of fun too because we weren't really connected with the outside industry. We just sort of knew each other. And for a lot of us it was our first real job. I had worked up for that other studio prior, but that was all local advertising. It was a very tiny shop and this was my first time working on stuff that was being seen by the outside world to a large degree and felt like a bigger deal, Like we did a we did a raising commercial with Michael Jackson, then we did it you know, I don't know, things like that that made it feel like a bigger deal than where I'd been.

And it was fun to get back to stop motion because I'd done stop motion as a kid, but I'd never done a professionally, and so that was all good fun. Did you have kind of half and I still on the film industry and what was going on there and where you'd eventually wanted to end up. I did, so I shifted my goals from you know, that kind of motion graphics, animation effects world to now stop motion and creature work. And I thought, all right, fine, I'll you know that all got taken over by computer effects. I'll now do creatures and I'll get good at stop motion, and as well, I I immersed myself in the motion control equipment at the studio as such as it was at the time, which over the time I was there, went from very primitive too it's pretty are good by the end of it, not because of me, but just that just happened to be the evolution of it.

But it was a good opportunity for me to learn how to operate motion control cameras and just blurning the ins and outs of that kind of equipment and running at because that was another tool or another way I could get into the visual effects industry, if not as in the stop motion the animator, then perhaps as a as a motion control cameraman shooting miniatures and things. So um So I was doing those two things with an eye still toward hopefully one day working at ILM, and that zero me back towards Island, because prior to that I still wanted to work there, but I had thought that that LA was probably a better bet for me in terms of Los Angeles in terms of the animated effects of motion graphics stuff, and as most of the shops were down there whereas Island is up and say, let's just good.

But this kind of refocused me on Island stuff. So toward the end of my six and a half years there, in ninety or about midway maybe in ninety when a dress it Barke come out in ninety three or ninety three, we were, as it happened, the studio was working on a spect test for a film called Dinosaur, which was later made by Disney using CG but at the time it started its life as a project that Phil Tipett was going to do it stop motion and script was by wayl and green, and it was being shopped around because I think Phil had to maybe because Jurassic Park came along or something. For some reason, it's stopping something he was going to do, and Disney started shopping it around to other stop motion companies and animation companies.

So we were doing We were setting up this big elaborate set piece of the swamp with some triceratops and some other dinosaurs. Now we were still doing clay animation at the time, but we were trying to make this look realistic ish but still kind of illustrative, i'd say, but more realistic than when our stuff normally looked like our stuff. It was normally pretty cartoon but it was a bid of elaborate thing, and I wasn't working in Actually, I was keeping an eye on. I thought it was interesting, but I wasn't working. I was working on something else.

But the film came out, and on the friday it came out, I just I wasn't that busy that day, so I took off work in the middle of the day to go see a matinee of it. And we'd all been having conversations for weeks, months really about the film. We've all seen in the trailers that we all and none of us knew anyone who worked at ILM or who could or stan In Winstons who could tell us what was going on. And we but we'd read that, you know, Stands shop of working on and ILMA was working on it, and we'd read that it featured these computer generated dinosaurs, and we'd you know, we would just look at the trailer and think, well, that can't be you know, you see like a foot in the mud, and we're like, well, that has to be real.

That's the stand. But then there's that chat where you're in the jeep booking out and the t rex legs just stopped past in the headlights, and we're like, why God, do you think they could get a thing moving that fast and that fluidly an animate track? And right, but that can't read the computer graphics, I mean, not that close to can't. You know. We were just like, I don't know, So I saw you out.

I was completely stunned, just knocked out of my seat and it went and I just it was a whole mix of things because it was beautiful, you know, I practically I think I might have actually teared up when you saw all the herds down in the lake at the first time, with the water, the sunlight glinting off the water, and the Joe Williams music rising up. Yeah, it's very crazy. After you know, a whole childhood of stopped motioning the holms and dreaming of realizing something like that. It was quite emotional news. So I get back to work and um, I just went over to where this guy as a working I just said, just stop what you're doing, put down your tools, go to the theater.

You know, whatever we all thought was possible, you really just you have no idea, just go, just go. But I you know, but as as impressed and and all as it was, it was a massive defeat because as well, that's it, I know, I thought I didn't think they'd be doing real life creatures. I thought stopped moshion was safe for a while and night have it. That was my queer path. And then well maybe I can still do the moshing control camera thing.

But if they're doing creatures, and you know, I don't know. And then so I just didn't know what my path forward was going to be. And then I just got a lucky break a couple of years later. Every year, about a year later, mid ninety four, or if we're trying the fall of ninety four, I think, Um, I heard a friend at the studio that Pixar, who I only knew for doing some commercials. They'd been doing, oh N lotsnow Junior, the short films they were doing exceeding festivals that that too, um, but they were and trying to get their animy to feature done and they were they needed animators, and they'd hoovered up every everyone they could fight in the Bay Area, and so they were looking further afield.

And she is Teresa Drilling is an animation director now, but she was not interested in doing computer animation. But she knew I was itching into find some way to take the next step. He said, you know, apparently they don't care if you even know how the tire computer on. Just they just want people who know how to animate characters. So I sent a real down and a reel.

But by the way, which I would never get me hired there today, but at the time a couple of things. One, they were really desperate to get more animators in there, but also um because they were really behind toy story. But also I have to remember there was a time when there was not a world a global industry of training animators the way there is now. Now there are terrific animation schools, certainly all over the US, but all over the world. France has an amazing animation school like they're all and um and so there there were certainly animation schools there, but not with SAW with CG programs that were really up and running yet to any great degree.

So there wasn't this pipeline of animators that they could tap into to bring in And and like I said, it wasn't they weren't specifically trying to find computer animators, but but they'd already tapped into every traditional animated both cell and stop motion that they could find in the Bay Area who was interested in doing CGM at that point anyway, So it's just a super lucky break. And you know, as they say, timing and and all that is crucial when you're out there trying to get that break. Yeah, and I had good enough skills to take advantage of the lucky opportunity. And the other thing that was funny though, is that I had thought that my skills as an animator stopped motion animator, which were mid length honestly to at least in the crowd.

I was in it at will Vinton's, which had some extremely talented stopped motion animators. But I had thought that was the entirety of what prepared me to do character animation on Toy Story. But what I had learned when I got there was that the motion control camera think also was great rounding for me, because I never animated anything in computer but with a most control camera. And you've got a track in a tower as a big robot basically with a camera on the end of it, and you have a computer off to the side, and you done a little controller and you sort of drive the whole thing down to one end of the track to bring the boom down and pan until the camera and set the focus, and you set all those values and then you go twenty four frames or fifty three, forty eight frame whatever later in the shot, drive it to a new position and set it there, and the computer sort of busin the in between between those positions.

Then you go on the software and you see curves that run between those values for the track and the hand in the telb and everything, and you tweak those curves or add new little knots in them to pull them down or up. That's exactly how you animated computer is exactly how to this day. Yeah, key framing and yeah, and I guess so that discipline of understanding framing and movement as well was really useful in terms of being out to animate in the computer and which so that was the first time you'd ever attempted to animate in the computer, was on the toy story. Yep, amazing. They because Vittins was taking baby steps understandably, they didn't want to invest in a bunch of expensive hardware at that time before they knew that they were getting into.

But they had they had kind of a partnership with a software company in Vancouver, Washington, which is just across the rivers from Portland. It's not Vancouver Cannons. And there was a company called them Hash and they made a software called Animation was an animation mentor, Yeah, animation mentor, and it was quite a powerful little animation CG animation package for its time and particularly for its cost, it was dead. It's like two hundred dollars or something. And so they had bought they had licenses with that, and they had so they had a bunch of PC's running that maybe eight or nine, and they had one Silicon Graphics workstation running ALIAS before my existed.

And I was just trying to sort of due tutorials with that when this other opportunity happened and I never got to animating anything. I got it, you know, sort of make us fear, you know, turn on ab light. You know. I was sort of at that stage and this other thing happened, and I left so Pixar with the first time I animated into the computer and there software at the time, by today these standards, it was quite simple and even crewde I'd say, um, for instance, you didn't interact with the character directly in the screen like you would you know now, you'd click, you know, you know on a raped character, and you just moved the arm. Everything was forward k I was a little tech techy for animators, but meaning if you want to close the arm, you go to the shoulder, you go to the elbow, you go to the wrist, you know, figures, cetera, rather than just sort of grabbing at at wrist and moveing in.

They did have i K the opposite that inverse kinematics for the feet, but it was a special tool you had to run. It was crazy. And it's funny too because even for that period, in some ways that was a bit old fashioned, because I, you know, I stayed at Pixars through the end of Toy Story and for about six months beyond. But then I Land, which was just across the bay, was prepping to do a sequel of Jurassic Park and it had been announcing the trades the George was going to do Star Wars films, and I thought, wow, you know, if I remember gonna try and work at ILM, now's the time. I've got a reel of Toy Story shots down.

And so I was there only about a year and a half later, and they were using soft demage and it had i K and all this other stuff, so it it felt more advanced, but not in a way that made you a better animator or anything. It just made it look easier to animate the characters. And actually, but it was funny because when I was at Pixar. A friend of mine backup in Portland was like, wow, you guys must have like cloth simulation and stuff to keep you know, the characters from penetrating through props and food themselves and stuff like automatically, and Almo I was like, oh no, I don't know we had any of those things, and I don't even I don't think anybody really had clost simulation then, because I remember on Phantom Menace was the first time I remember I LM really getting into that in a big way, and it was tough because we had to do Jedi robes on digit doubles.

Some of things like that extremely difficult and um, you know, like Boss NASA's long gown outfit really wears and things like that, and it was really hard then to do. So looking back, I'm like, you know, I don't know why my friend thought anybody, but he thought if anyone did, Pixar would have it. But we totally didn't end that. But it was great. Pixar was an awesome experience.

In fact, leaving there was really tough. It was just it was only because I really really really wanted to work at ILM and I really wanted to do the Ray Harry Housing thing more than the Walt Disney thing. That makes sense the visual effects in a live action film path rather than the animated feature path. And then of course then years later we made Raengo, which brought me back to animated features. But yeah, still, yeah, that I was going to talk to about Rangox.

This film I've only seen once, but I remember being quite taken back by the complexity of its look for all the time. What year was that? That was a twenty eleven, I think, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, but it just it was a very very densely detailed scenes in that and that was that would have been Island's first delving into fully animated movie, right, yeah, when I it's ironic because when I joined ILM in the middle of ninety six, they were very keen to create their own animated feature because they needed that if we were going to go down that path, the smart play was to have your own IP. So the thing was you were actually because all their visual effects work was worked for higher but you know, like all of visual effects work still is, and so they're very keen to do that.

And for a number of years they had different projects that kind of came and went, but none of them ever quite took off. Mack. There was one that was based on characters from Frankenstein. It wasn't a retailing your Frankenstein it was, but it was in that world the same character, and that one almost made it. We were in production on that, our pre production, and I was going to be a lad animator on one of the characters.

But then there was some shakeup at the Universal and they asked that film whatever for the usual reasons. It went away up and said an Island actually set up an animation group, an animated features group, and with their own offices, and they tried for a few years on a number of projects to get something into shape to green green light, and then finally George decided instead to create Lucas Animation as a completely separate thing. So I mean, that's not Island, it's not a part of Island. It's just a complete separate arm of the Lucastone company. And they started creating Clone Wars, you know.

Dave Filoni came on board and all that, and George had plans for a film which later came out ended up being called Strange Magic. I think it was called something else back then, but and that was in development for a while, but that also then got I think George got focused on Clone Wars and the prequels, or at least the finishing of the prequels. I think that that between that and Clone Wars and some other things, he just felt like he was too busy to focus on what was then called Primrose with Strange Magic. But that got resurrected and actually did finally get finished years later with Gary Rydstrom as the director at ILM. Ironically, ILM ended up doing that.

The animation and the CEG were but it was a kind of a It had gone through like lots of hands and changes and things, and I'd ever really had much to do it. I think I helped the animate on the shot or two at some point where I was between projects and he was like, hey Kenny, Jake Hans some shots. I was like servic But anyways, Yeah, So Ringo was really our first project, and our first project that was really just end to end ILM. We didn't do story so in a sense we were still operating as a service for the film. Um so it was an R A P or anythink you know, work at his own story group down in La and all that.

But outside of that, he was very keen to work with us in a new way because we'd already done three Pirates films with him and we were used to working with him as the client. We want to put it that way. I don't like that Terman Sunsford business cliented and Gordon like it either. But but he understood that sort of that was the relationship, the sort of client vendor relationship that is usually the norm right with PECS work. But he came up there very early with a big pile of artwork and he pinned it all up in a room and he brought up Jim Burke at his head of story, and he had us bring in everybody that was at that point targeted to work on the project.

You know, the crew of course grows over time, but all certainly all the heads of department and leads and taste into a room and he did a big pitch for everyone because he wanted to kind of bring everybody in and sort of a big group to say, you know, we're all filmmakers, we're baking a movie. I don't want you to think of yourselves as the vendor at the other end of some phone call. You know, this is we're making a movie together. And he's very keen on that shift in thinking, which was I thought great because it also, I hope, because I'd been telling people that, particularly once i'd become a soup and I'd had time, I'd been able to spend time on set, not just doing the visual effects back at the visuals facility, but spend time on set.

I would tell animators as often as I could. Think of yourselves as filmmakers. You're you're part of the team that are making this film. You're not a visual effects artist at a far you know, certainly geographically you're far away from where the film is happening, but you are an integral part of the filmmaking team. We're making a movie.

The three. That's a really important thing because I just feel like a lot of particularly every animator shop, haven't spent any time on set, or haven't made films themselves, like live action films, feel very separated from all of that, from the sort of Hollywood of it, if you will, and the good, the good idea of Hollywood. You know that, you know the razzle dead, you know that being on sad and the cameras and you know lights came actually kind of part of it, and I would always probably be like, no, no, no, we are every bit you know where you know. Anyways, so that was a big shift that Gore was also very keen to make on Rango, and everyone just adored that working on that project, and anyone you talked to it island who worked on that film.

To this day, we'll say that if if not their favorite project, and for any idea, it is, um certainly, you know, one of the favorite things I've ever worked on. But many people will say to me, I've never had more fun on a project. What are we going to do another one? So so it was really yeah, it was really great, and you know, it was reasonably successful, but it didn't I don't think the highest grossing UNIM and film mill any stretch. I think Paramount would probably have liked for too much more money.

But it won the Oscar and it did fine, and I see love for it all the time online, you know, just random memes and tweets about you know, how much people love that film, and so that's great. Yeah, and probably you know, you put a rocket up pixel to a certain extend to kind of continue to up their game because it did look equal to while beyond the standard at the time. I think, well, and you know, that was one of the things Gore It was very keen to not try to go head to head with the Pixars and the DreamWorks or Disney feature animation because you know, his blade he would say it is. You know, they're great, They're at the top of their game before what they did like that they beach got a kind of a house style and it's awesome.

Why would we trying to compete? You know, did that same there? So they're all over here and they're great, We're gonna be over well here. So you know, he very intentionally wanted his movie. He makes it sound like a choice.

I don't think he could make a movie that looked at any other way that that like like, I don't think he could make a movie that looked like Despicable Meat or Wally or you know, name Shrek. The easy way to say that is cartoony. But though those ones all have super distinct styles, and cartoony can sound like an insult, it's not. Um. I know from experience that trying to pair things down to their essence and do proper animated design is one of the hardest things there is and to make that successful.

Um. But there's a there's an idea that because Raindo had a more realistic ish or photographic look or complex look that it was, that that's necessarily more difficult. It's not. Um, it's more expensive and and and he can be more difficult just simply in terms of um the labor involved, right, But creatively it's it's a it's just a similar artistic tasks to achieve, you know what I mean, Like it's just like painting and realism versus painting something that's very graphic and um but excellently um executed that the realistic painting might take a little longer or some perhaps I don't know, but it's not we're valid creative do whatever. Sum.

But what what made the film a great fit for us was, um, you know, we didn't have a lot of people working in Alem who had done a lot of graphic cartoon style work, but we had a lot of people there were very good at making things look realistic in detail and then and that's what we're wanted. And he also even in terms of the characters, even though they're very stylized and you know, Rader himself is quite stylized. He he's not a realistic looking lizard, although he's textured like one. And then that's that's a hard that could be a hard balance to strike sometimes, especially if the characters was the realism versus the fact that they are stylized. That we need things to read and pop and and be very clear in our um but um but the but because he wanted the whole world, you know, the dirt on the ground, that the wood of you know, the old weather wood of the town, the wagon wheels, the dirty glasses in the in the cantina that, you know, all of it to look kind of realistic ish, and certainly what we started calling so realistic, we started calling it a photographic look like could he actually get filmed somehow?

Um that suited our artists, our texture artists, our modelers, all those folks are lighting people. That suited them really well. So in a lot of ways for a first UM animated feature out of the gate, for us, it was a perfect fit. Whereas if somebody had come in and wanted something in you know, like the Warner Brothers style or any anything sort of more in that world, it would I think it would have been much harder for us to do than what we we did on rang Up that said, uh we did, I didn't work out it, but we did just last year or the year before the Space M sequel and did a whole bunch of super squashy, stretchy word of Reather style classic animation, and the animate has had a ball on that and the riggers got to do really different things and all that.

But yeah, for us, Ago was like a great sweet spot. And you know, even in terms of the character performance, Gore didn't want you know, a lot of most i'd say feature animation typically the higher end stuff, not that maybe the independent, weird independent stuff that the hir end stuff comes from a tradition of character acting that's sort of an extension of Vaudeville plus kind of Broadway musical where it's like really strong closing and quick anticipations before movements, and Gore really did not want to do that at all. He wanted this kind of awkward, restrained you know, like if somebody calls a character off screen instead of a big you know, it's dissipation and look, you know, it's more sort of yeah, you know, and I think if this is an audio only podcast.

I apologize, but I'll add a description in. Yeah, but it just like a you know, weird little glance and side look rather than a big anticipation and follow through and all that stuff. So that as well. It was fun for us as I mean, you know, sure there were people on the on the animators on the team who are itching to do really cartoon style animation because we never got to do that in Ireland. We were always doing realistic stuff.

But this was kind of a fun sweet spot where we had moments like when we go backs up to the cactus and I guess the spines and it just springs off and defies gravity for a moment, super cartoon style, and but it sort of burns that moment, doesn't it, because it hasn't been like that throughout and therefore it stands out and it's funny because of it. Yeah, that's a good movie. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to show my kids because I don't think they've seen it. They're they're at the right age now. Just just winding back when you first joined Island.

You know, you have dreamed since you were twelve years old to work on a Star Wars movie. Did you get to work on the special edition, the ninety seven special Edition or other stuff go on for you? Then those were just being finished up my show Project Lost World, which was happening at the time, and the special editions were just finally being wrapped up. I ended up getting another crack at it a few years later though, between Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith. Right, Yeah, it's beig two or three.

It just because I eat kiptees, because between one and two is when we did our first cgo to tests, and sort of in between those two products. Then between two and three, George well, because we had this big team built up and Ailan needed those folks busy. I'm gamefully employed between the finish of two in the beginning of three, and so one of the things George wanted to do was to continue with some more trixes and things on the original trilogy, and so Islam was great with people on that and that'll keep folks busy. And I went to Rob Coleman and I said, and I wasn't working on any of that. I was on.

I forget what I was on. Then Pirates, I think already. But I went to Rob and I said, Hey, you know, I never really liked that Java that they did in the special edition, and we have a much better looking asset now, the job of it we created for the pod race. How don't you pitch George John redoing that that scene with the better look at Java? And he's like, okay, I'll do it.

Because he was having regular meetings with George job of the different things or was wanting to fix and stuff that was coming up on episode three. So he comes back to me in a while later, he's like, yeah, he wants to do it. I'm like, great, because you're gonna You're gonna lead it, Okay. So it was me and I think it was just two of us. I think it was me and Sean Curring was animated, a friend of mine near an Island, still very close friend of mine, and I think we split the shots up.

I think there were five shots, and he did the first three and I did that the last two. One of them is the long Walk a Talk, the stepping tail, and the long Walk and Talk. We did the shots and I had a brainstorm about how to avoid having to have on step on the tail because I always said the joke is a little sass and then as well, they kind of cut out what they had to do was in terms of cutting out hand to get over the tail is looked a little jake to me, and I, well, they'll be able to do a better version of that now, but still it's like better than not have to do it at all. And the way I saw it is I just thought they were trying to solve a problem that it wasn't like, you know, important to George.

It was just they were just trying to solve a problem of getting him across the tail is big tail that we know Joba has. So I came up with this thing where Jaba would start to turn as as hands walking behind him. We do if you're talking to someone and they walk behind you and you sort of turn and keep your eye on him, and that you would imagine and that his tail was sort of dragging with him and they were kind of almost in a little pirouette sort of walking around each other. Then you know, and then they could continue on from there and um and Jaba would just do a full turn, or he turned part way and turned back. I forget what the solution was, So I blocked in a version of not final animation and just a version of it.

And Rob was having one of his regular reviews with George and I just sat down and then you know, for you rose back and in the theater and that shout comes up and George sits up at the seat. And I never really saw him get cranky with anyone. That's the only time I saw him. And I'm sure people who worked with him a lot more. I worked through him some one clone wars as as one of Rob's Adam soups and presented a lot of work to him, and I never saw him get cranky there, but I'm sure you know he had.

He's had his mom probably more on set, but there's more pressure. But this is the first time I ever said I've got craiky and daily. He's already sits up and he turns to Rob and he says, why did you take out the hand stabbing on the tail? That was my favorite part of this whole sequence. I didn't even want to do this.

You talked me into it, so the rope took the flat everything. I was like, oh, Rob, I am so says, Oh, don't worry about it, He's not really man, So I thought I redid it. With the with the big tail thing, but I took I reduced a lot um. My recollection of the original version of the Special Editions was he is he really bug eyed win and a big out of his mouth, and I just took that down to make him look more grumpy than completely shocked. M and you know, and just and so that was fine and that George was okay with that.

We we got it done, and I do think it looks much better. I mean, I agree with people who say that seem may not belong in the film because we've already received the alation from the same information all that arguing that point, But I feel like if it's going to be in the movie, the version we did was was better. Lockets. Yeah, I kind of always viewed those ninety seven Special Editions as a way of George kind of pushing the technology forward and exercising a need to get to the next step of visual effects. And you know, I'm not a fan of that jabbasine either, but I remember being completely transfixed by all the making obs at the time, which are right, did sell it as this was the solution to a problem, you know, with hands stepping on his tail.

So I I had some affection for it, I have to say, But I mean, I'm sure you look now even at the four version and think we could do a lot better now, Oh for sure, And that's always going to happen, right, Like, I don't think we had any sub surf for scattering round same time, that best that that thing that happens with real skin, the light kind of penetrates the outer lawyers and gives it a slight kind of waxy glow. I don't think we had that in our rendering yet we would have it if not. If we did, we'd and we used it on that scene. Because my recollection attempt of projects I was involved, it was the Davy was the first thing I remember seeing. Davy Jones and Pirates was the first thing I remember seeing that as as a component of the rendering it.

I'm sure it existed at ILM prior to that, on some other projects maybe, but I don't recall it, like I don't remember seeing it in the Mummy films. Friends. Actually they might have had it, but I actually remember it, and Davy is the first time. Yeah, So things like that would certainly improved the look of it. And for sure, Yeah, I mean two thousand and four was a was an eon ago.

Yeah, you mentioned about how you sort of pitched the idea to Rob. Was it kind of open like that with regards to those four special editions the blue ray that you could kind of come up with the night it because there was like the e watts blinked now and can't think what else was added? My friend drew into it, wouldn't it. I don't think it was common. I mean I think most of the stuff that got changed was stuff George wanted to have changed, and they would sit there and look at the movie together and he make up a list and that kind of thing.

This was just a thing that sort of bugged me, and I just thought, well, I thought, you know, doesn't hurt task. But it wasn't like they It wasn't like common knowledge at the company. Hey, if you got an idea for something to get changed, you know, you know, but you you felt comfortable enough to do so, which is great. You know, it's a you old superior Roll who then to get to his superior Oh harmste and the company. I mean, I would say that while back specifically wasn't necessarily a thing, the company itself has always had a very open culture.

We talk about it a lot. The ISLM culture was always like a dailies. People are expected to speak up. There wasn't somewhat hushed hierarchy where everyone shuts up and waits for the visual effects soups to do the thing. Now.

Of course, if you're having a review with the director, ever wakes for the director to say what they're going to say and all that, and there's certain aspects of keeping your trap shut at certain times. You know, all that goes with any business. But um, but the company generally is very low ego, very collaborative. Those are all sort of hallmarks we've always considered to be kind of the Island way. Um.

It's funny. I remember I was on a flight back from La Once and it's Southwest Airlines where you don't have design seats, so you just get on in boarding groups like a busy, and i'd seen I saw it. Phil Tippett was in line, and I didn't really know Phil well then, and I was very excited to see him, like, oh my god, it's still Tippett. So I started chatting him up, said, oh, you know my work over at Island that put him in easy you know, because it wasn't just a crazy fan. It was a crazy fan, but Vand was working an island so um so we sat next to each other.

We had a really nice chat on the pack up. But I remember at that point I was I was an anim soup but I think I was only on my first or second project at ILM as an animation supervisor, and I was talking to him. I was saying, so, how do you run your dailies? I said, I'd like to get people talking in my dailies. I want everybody to speak up.

And I think he well, his bars was, oh my god, no, you can't do that at the Peanut Gallery. You will kill you you can. And I think what he was imagining was that thing of like not having an opinion of your own, so you sort of ask everybody to like, hey, what do you think? Which I don't think I explained my silver very law, but what I meant was, and I still do this to this day on every project I'm and I'm souping. And unfortunately, nowadays a lot of my animation reviews are zoom calls, and I'm kinda find a way to change this because most of those zoom calls I do now are just with the animation soup or lead at the other end, not with the whole animation crew.

And I want to change that. I want to get back to talking directly animators because I really missed that. But anyways, but I would always do it at beginning project is tell the animation teaming, um, please speak up in dailies. I have a whole room full of animator brains and I want you know, you guys are all looking at the shots and you're gonna see things, and I want people to speak up. And you know, people will be read icon for various reasons.

Some people are just a little shy. Some people feel like if they talk a lot about somebody else's shots, then people are gonna talk about their shots and give them lots of notes that you know what I mean. There's a political suicide kind of thing, yes, but you know, over time you get everyone uncomfortable talking and everyone knows there's there's an etiquette to it. I mean, if you're seeing a shot that you know is close to final, that's not the time to say hey, would it be better for keeping from the left to say the right or but it is the time to say, you know, the flip looks like it's slipping there a little bit, or there's a little hiccup, a little bump in the animation, right, you know, little things like that.

But if it's first blocking, then it's totally game to say, boy, I think there will be a lot of funnier if he pau I was great there and then did this thing or whatever, um and I love that. And then the only other component that that's really impointant important is that I have to then after a conversation has been had, I have to bring it back to exactly what we're going to do. Like number one, people have to understand that I have a point of view, and I always trying to make that clear at the beginning, you know, rather than as they said, rather just broke Hey, what is everybody think? It's not back, I'll talk and I'll have a point of view. But then if people want to talk up, they're welcome to you.

That's that. And then at the end of it, I have to be able to say in the animator, Okay, we're gonna do this, this and this, don't worry about the rest of it. I think you know, and I think we need to do those things let's let's just do these three things and great, and so they know walking out and there is afterly to do it. And that's how at again of me, and that's how I like to run dailies. Um, but again it's kind of I found the island culture to be very much that way general that it's low ego, very collaborative people are, people don't hide their special saws so like when people are working together in similar in the same discipline, you know, I'm told that it could be a problem at some companies where people are like, well, you know, if I tell everybody how I get things done, then they'll know how to do it, you know, and then when it comes time to lay people off, I have an advantage or whatever.

People create their own little islands, don't they, and they're they're afraid to let people to their shore. A question then to you, obviously bring animators in and people from your department. Do you ever have people from other departments within ILM to come and view your work? Is they're more open for them that you know, somebody who is a textual artist, would they be there for an animation meeting for instance? Sometimes And it's not like it's forbidinary it's just to usually too busy to sit to hours of animation dealers.

There are reviews though, where we're kind of reviewing everything and sort of you know, in other words, there might be some animation shots in there and everyone will see them, so they can go, you know, layout and say, oh, you guys are still using the old camera. You gotta update your camera, which change the band on that, or texturers can say we'll see an animation review, they wouldn't be seeing real rendered textures. I'm trying to get a good example of this. Like one place where it all comes together for instances is looked dev reviews, where we'll have a character that we're creating and it's just a turntable right of the character. So the modeling folks are in there so just judge if how the model is looking.

The texture are certain there to judge how the textures or look at the look dev artists who's putting all that together and rendering it is there. I'm there because I might be like, boy, those eyes don't read well at all. You know when we get into animation, that's going to be a problem. So that that kind of that's a that's one place we all kind of come together. And also I would say, one shots start to go into lighting, um, after animation, then typically everyone's in there.

I go, I go to those dailies, UM, and then texture model, and everybody's in there because again they're looking at there where you can see everything all put together and everyone's looking at it. In terms of those folks coming to animation dailies, like I said, not as common because we're using a sort of simplified version of the character with sort of low rest textures and things like that, so they can judge that work anyways. UM, And I guess there's a there's a there's potential there as well as sort of infecting somebody else's mind with an idea or you know, they might think all of that, well that's not good enough. Or I don't know, I wouldn't have done it that way before that it gets to the point where they need to work on it perhaps, Um, yeah, I don't know.

I think like I think, if someone wanted to be part of anti dailies for a web, even if it was just they they're like, I've never I'd I'd like to experience that, you know, or if they or they might have a more concrete reason like, well, I'm finding now that if I if I don't keep an eye on that, then I don't have a full understanding of how the character is being used, and it helps me. But whatever, whatever the reason, it might be, BEA's only fine. Nobody would say no, well, I guess you also there's a is there not a certain aspect to your work where you want to be able to reveal something that's reached a certain level that you're happy with two people beyond the department to make sure it has that impact, not so much within the company.

I wouldn't say we don't usually feel like I don't usually feel like, oh, it's not ready, it's not ready to be seen. Um, I might like as an animator, there are times, and any animator would say this, I think where you're working on a set of shots and the animation supervisor myself might say, hey, you know, how's it going? Could we when you think we might see those and they may be like, and they're not ready yet, but you know Tuesday's review I'll be that'll be okay. You know, We're like, yeah, yeah, they could. Because sometimes you need to get it to a certain level to sell the ideas that you come up with.

Um, So for sure at that level that that happens. There are times when I'm I'm looking in a sequence and maybe the visual effects producer is saying to me, hey, um, the you know, production is asking, you know, when they might see that, you know, the directors asking when they might see that sequence in review. Um, we haven't looked at it in a while. And I might say, yeah, it's not ready yet. Uh, you know, I'm might do.

My version of that was like, you know, all right, next Wednesday's review, we're going to show it and then I'll talk to the animators day, Okay, we're ready. We've got to have this ready by then, because I know that things aren't quite in place yet and the sequence is a little bumpy and it's not gonna sell. And then and then, you know, as you say, the worry there is that you show a half baked idea or a half realized idea and they throw out the whole idea because it doesn't really get a chance to live. So, yes, that that that that happens sort of between the animators and myself and between myself and the director, not so much between the animation department and other departments. But in terms of talking of expectation, I guess is the word going back to something like The Phantom Menace.

You know, it's a huge movie, the anticipation is enormous. George hasn't made a Star Wars movie for fifteen sixteen years or whatever it was. By the release date, what was the pressure like working on that show? And you know what shots did you work on that you kind of still look back fondly on. Pressure wise, for me, I mean from where I sit now, um, seems laughably small because I was an animator.

I started this show just as an animator. I finished the show as a lead animator. I got sort of promoted in the middle things. Um. But but you know, my concern in any game of time was just the shots I had on my plate to get done.

And that's a pretty small amount of pressure, that said, even at that level, particularly as you say, for someone who you know, had this lifelong dream of working an ILM and working on a Star Wars film, and you know you want to do well, so you put a lot of pressure on yourself certainly, and we all wanted the film to do well because you know, we're all such fans and we love joking and we love Star Wars and all that stuff. And that's a whole other thing. But just saying that, compared to what what I've experienced since as a soup, where I have a lot more responsibility for a chunk of the show, um, it wasn't much pressure at all, and it was super fun. I had done before the film started, between a Lost World and Santa Menes Phantom Menaces ramping up.

Um, I noticed that there was a the pit roid asset was ready to go, and you can see your your listeners won't see it, but behind me there's a cabinet full of tin robots, like wind up Little tim wind up robots. And I love robots generally. So I took the pittroid asset and I did a little run cycle and I did a little vignette up when I'm running along and tripping and falling on his face and another one comes running along after him and steps on his head and runs off, And um, I showed it to rob and he goes, oh, you like you like robots? Okay, so he put me on ironically, not the pit roids. I think that stuff wasn't ready to start yet he put me on the destroyer droids, the droider cause the rolling droids, and that was super fun because they're complicated.

And to this day, dud Chain when he designs things that are mechanical that way, he designs him to pretty much work. You know, there are some sheets and we don't really have to engineer it with things like motors and things inside and find room for all that. But in terms of the way the parts flide together and all that, they don't just sort of vanish or scale or stretch or whatever they're they're machined parts that slide together and fold up the way. And that's why there's actually quite a good toy of the droid, a cuve that actually does you can unfold it completely and you can pull the back up the thing because of how designed it. So that was part of the fun of it was that you could really kind of think it through.

The tough part was that had three legs and short, little two segment legs, and that made it super hard to come up with a walk. It looked balanced and plausible. Now I used to joke about, you know, to give me handing the character with three legs, but I was actually I talked to I've been working with him a lot and recent hears on the Mandalorian series and at some point that up and now I was giving them a hard time about it, and he said, you know, I didn't design it to walk. He said, it was always intended to just roll in the place and pop up and be kind of like a tripod a gun platform. Me.

He gets around by rolling and then once it's reached its destination and pop starts shooting. And he said, but George wanted it to walk. So I was like, oh, okay, all right, look um. But so those are super fun and then as and I worked on those with a handful of other animators, but that's where I was sort of like the lead on that. But when I really got a sort of official lead animator designation was Boston Ass.

So Rob said, okay, I'm many because I had done I did that the Droidakabin. I was one of the animators working on water under Linda Belt was the lead animator on that and did some shots like the what are you some kind of dead eye mind? Trips? Don't a worth on me, only money and jeter. He So I did that handful of water shots and Rob was pleased with those, and so then he put me on Boston Ass and said, all right, you'll be the animal lead on Boston Ass and I had a small team of three or four animators.

She'll helped me with those shots. And does that mean that you're in charge of everything to do that cart in creating his robes and his gwels moving with over the place, and yes, ish so his robes. Fortunately, as I was talking about earlier, we just were kind of in the early stages of having cloth simulation, so I didn't have to animate his robes. I had to think about them, like when I was posing him, Like had to make sure that his arms there were space between his arms and his body for the robes, and you know, things like that, kind of normal things we think about now. But prior to having clossimulation, we cheat a lot of that stuff, and that we had to start being serious about yet cloth simulation coming along.

But um, but his jowls, we didn't have flesh simulation yet, so fat and flesh and muscle, we didn't have those things yet, so we um, that was all just an animation rig. And I had to animate all that stuff. And so for me, the main part of my responsibilities anim lead was to establish how he moves, how he expresses himself. And we had the voice. Obviously, we had friv Vlested, who was great physical reference for the character.

He's a big guy and he's had a big hot face and he's very animated generally so, but he he swears a little more than bust necessary. Yea. He We had footage of him that wasn't all that useful. It was more It was more uful was to look at him from movies and just sort of drawing his general vibe. The reason that dialogue stuff, and this is because this Elf and Hap will do dialogue is you know they're an electurn in a little recording boots and they maybe have their reading glasses on or whatever, and they're kind of looking at the script is usually not off book by the time they're doing done and they're recording um, and you know, occasionally they'll sort of look up from the page and actually kind of acted out, but mostly not, so you can't really look at it for exact reference, which is why I Rango we didn't go that.

We we had all the actors in a sound stage wearing costumes and holy process and reported them together and shot all that and we didn't rotoscope that, but we got a lot more out of it as animators than we normally do from a voice recording. But anyways, so we had that from Brian, and so you know, I animated the first few shots and kind of set a tone for it, and then we talked to the other animators about their shots and then hand this stuff off to Rob and then he would present it to George. And that's actually the first time I got to speak to George, which was super nerve racking. We had had a review and they were looking at some rendered shots of Boss Nassa and he had said something about the animation, but there was something about the context of the use of that word that made me doubt that he was actually talking about the motion, that he was actually talking some other aspect of the like the texturing or something.

But it wasn't one hundred percent clear because I was in this session, but I wasn't talking to George. I was just sitting in row or two behind as he talked to Rob. And then after the dailies, I saw George crossing the parking lot to tweet buildings, and I thought, well, I have a perfectly good work related reason to to speak to the man, and there he is, and so I went over there, and I was unbelievably nerve racking. Now even just a few year later, when I was working on Clone Wars with Rob, and Rob had brought myself and Chris Armstrong on as sort of undersuits to take on sequences. And I had, between Santa Manis and Clone Wars, had my first opportunity as an animation stup on AI or Effiicial Intelligence and you know, I'm Steven Spielberger.

So I had worked on that and and so then on Clone Wars, Rob would just have Chris and I present our sequences to George and by then I was so nervous about it, but I got on with it, you know, but this vanta menace. This first time just going up to him to talk to him about a shot, I was so I was vibrating and so like you know, worked up about a bas I you know, went up to him and said, hey, you know, I'm lead on boss and asked and he said a question about that and said animation, said oh, hey, you no, no, it's not the animation. It's just you know that this that whatever request and texturing lighting some aspect of the thing, and um, okay, great, so you sit. You know, I think that was it. Like I didn't keep him any longer there youth very much, but that was one first time getting to ever speak to George, and Netlace said, super memorable for me.

I'm sure he would out of his brain then. But Ben, it was past and you've got the answer you wanted as well, which is good. Yeah, yeah, exactly, it wasn't Yeah, would have been awful, not awful, but it certainly would have bumped me out. But like, well, yeah, he's like that doesn't snel realistic at all the ways moving everyone? No, when you employed people or when people get employed at Island, particularly in character and animation.

You know, we're in a time now where most people I'm guessing will have been animating on a computer for some years before they try and get a job. Is it still important do you think for those people starting out to have the kind of physical skills that you had doing stop motion, you know, claymation, all that kind of stuff to be able to do what they do now. Isn't still I want to have that kind of tangible sense memory? Yes, and no, I would think I would say it isn't essential. I've worked with some amazing CG animators who've only ever worked in the computer.

They never worked at Stoll Animation, they've worked at Stop motion. That said, I certainly don't think it hurts to have other creative experiences like that that feed into it, you know, um, like uh, you know, stop motions is just one of many, or sell animation or or live action filmmaking experience or theater experience as you know acting. Um, it's great experience for animators. So there's a whole bunch of things that aren't a requisite, like aren't absolutely necessary but not hurt and um and even drawing, I think drawing is super helpful, I'm because you can use it to plan out shots before you ever jump into the computer. And I urge you, but who even animators can't dry still urge them to um at least stick figure out their shot in some form or right down ideas or something before just hopping right into pulling the character around in the computer.

But maybe even that's kind of an old fashioned notion now. Um, but again, if you know, if somebody said to me while I was thinking about taking drawing glasses, but I'd be like, take them if you have the opportunity, um do it. That's super helpful. Sculpting classes, photography, all that stuff is helpful, but it isn't like, you know, if you haven't done that, you can't be a good animator. Plenty of good kids out there who just only ever animated in that in the computer and are never been amazing much better than I have.

So I was also going to ask about so Lost World. Let's say, how much has changed in animation since then, because a lot has changed in visual effects since then in terms of the tools of you know, available to you. How you talked about, you know, the way light bounces off skin, and all those extra tools have been added in hair and fur and cloth and all those things. But with animation itself, is it still kind of at its essence as it was for you when you first started animating in the computer. Yeah, it's I talked about this a lot at work.

It's shockingly little has changed when you're talking specifically about key framed animation, that is animation with the motion is being thought up and created by the animator. So obviously motion captures came along, and so for realistic humanoid characters. We use that now. Facial motion capture has evolved greatly, and there's a bunch of different flavors of that now. And you know, if we did Davy Jones today, we'd be using that, whereas we were using it back in two thousand and six Tony down six we were doing handing his face by hand.

So those things have changed. But when you're actually key frame things yourself, and they still do tons of that on, particularly for creatures and things that just aren't human or two are much too large to have normal new emotion or what have you, it's exactly the same. You you set keys on the excuse me, on the various parts of the creature. You know, you pose it, move along in the shot, pose it again, move along in the shop, pose it again, and the computer sort of does the in between. If you will connect those positions, was splind you go in and edit the blinds, because if you let the computer do it, it looks terrible.

Say you make all kinds of little alterations and tell your debt refinements until you're done. It's kind of amazing to me that that really has not changed. I don't know how it could change. I mean, there have been all kinds of experiments over the years. There was the dinosaur or input device on the first drastic part that enabled the animators who were stop motion animators to animate the dinosaurs that would end up being CG so they had a physical dinosaur sort of armature to move and Matt had little actually on it that communicated with computer.

But that didn't last long because honestly, it was a pretty clunky way to do that kind of work. And once people gone on with the business of learning to use the computer and animate the computer, that's much more directable. We do it um but the outside of that, there haven't been you know, we've tried different studios and even we have played around with little gizmos that animators can use just sort of blocked out their scenes, like if they're doing a fight scene. Like we've got reviews those xen suits that they are a kind of motion capture suit, but that don't acquire all of the infrastructure of a normal mo cap setup, so you can do it in kind of small rooms and stuff. When we had an actor acting room at an ILM, and that was set up for a while and maybe still was with an x and suit.

So I if an animator was again doing work that even it was ultimately going to be key framed, but they could plan out a shot just using their bodies, just quickly block out a thing using the Xcent suits and get poses and things quickly. So we've played around with that, but mostly people still just use the mouse and the keyboard, the animate that in the software and my we use my f done free years now, real time computing is changing things a bit. It's certainly making it possible branimators to see their scenes in a better state of lighting and texturing and all that. Although we're on the island side, we're still not really nobody's really using that. A handful of people we have to use it for k Twoso for two shots.

Did I read some way in roy one? Some real time? Yeah? And so we have a separate division called x Lab that's only real time and said they do games work, they do ride show work that relies on real time computing, be our experiences, things like that, and we work with them to get a version of Kate to us, mainly just because we know it's coming and we know it's going to for our work. More and more we're going to be in a real time environment.

That's are work, but it just hasn't made mentu in roads for us at ILM into animation. And it's mainly because like if we were a smaller shop, we were like a little ten person shop, we could be a lot more nimble and we could certainly get everyone, all the animators set up with the kind of box you need for running unreal or which whichever flavor of real time you're doing, and we could spend some time figuring out how to get all our bespoke rigs and plugins and things that help us out in my you know, an equivalency on the unreal side. But when you've got a big, big studio with lots and lots of artists, that's a much bigger ask and it's a lot more infrastructure, a lot more expense than all of stuff.

So we're just slower to adopt things like that. Just that's so it's always been that way, it's always going to be that way. But we have groups like x Lab pushing the boundaries of real time computing and also both the way they they've been very involved with creating the volume right the big led Wolf, because that's all real time media that's on that's on there UM. So those twoper have talked to each other a lot. There's a lot of overlap between Next Lab and Island.

We're right next door to each other in the same complex and UM and so in that way and real our real time, we should say, has is having a big effect generally on visual effects, just not so far for us as animators and ILM, which hopefully will change soon because there's a lot of advantages to it. It. I get frustrated with seeing the previous that we get from companies like Third Floor, who has been doing our previous. I'm analrand and it looks amazing. It's just looks beautiful.

And our anim renders, you know, we anim is just a stage. We don't try and make everything look beautiful. We just try to communicate the animation. But it just looks so much less pretty than the pres of course, the danger there though, is if you make your anim renders look too pretty, you end up start have lighting conversations with the director instead of animation reviews, so they start focusing on the long stuff and so that there's a there's a Danja there took anyways, But the thing that for for years now, everyone's been saying real time is going to change visual effects, and it is. You know, it's having an effect on various areas, improving our tool sets and our speed and all that.

But I think AI is actually yeah about that change our future, mold our future in ways that we don't even we can't possibly imagine at this point. Actually, um, have you seen any of that arriving yet, or any sort of things that are in development that you can talk about evolving AI? Because it seems to be affecting just about every industry at the moment. Oh for sure. Um.

Yeah, it's scary and exciting and equal nations. Um, you know, there are obvious things that I think are going to change very quickly, Like, um, I suspect that soon we won't need to shoot blue or green screen anymore because the AI will be able to tech moving. I've already seen white papers on this and some sort of examples on YouTube of similar kinds of things. It's just none of it's quite there yet for our purposes, quite clean enough for I res enough for this to that. But pretty soon yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll recognize a moving thing is separated from its background.

Easily. They're already you know, with still images that's become a thing on your phone now, it's like exactly, yeah. Yeah, So for moving images at the resolution we need, any actacy we need and all that. I'm sure it's actually already happening somewhere because I'm not totally plugged into that. But I'm just saying like, that's an early that's an example I can see right away, and things like that like paint paint out kind of things and fix it kind of things.

Um. But obviously the whole detait thing is given in he is already changing completely how we do de aging and though face swapping and even bread and butter things like when we've had a stunt actor, you know, in a shot and they're they're close enough to Canada, you can see us in the stunt actor, the actor actor doing a face swap on them. Um, So that's already changing completely how we do all that kind of work. Um. But what I really scratchway head over is, um, anytime there's a big sea change in technology like this, there's always things that nobody anticipated.

Yeah that, So what I really wonder about is, you know, five years from now, what will I be saying, you know, holy cow, I had no idea we'd be doing this well, I mean even deep fake. Um. You know, when when it appeared, I was just like what on earth? Like, well, you know, how does that even? You know?

And now I couldn't tell you exactly outworks, but I have a kind of an idea. After it's been explained to me any times out Adver Sugar Networks and all that work, I kind of understand it now, but it's still pretty strange stuff. But anyways, you know, before that came along, if someone had told me, oh, play the way just a couple of years, here's where you're going to see, I like, yeah, what really? So I'm wondering in five years from now, what am I going to be saying to myself? You know, I never could have possibly imagined this.

This is insane again, both good and bad. So yeah, see as a last question, because I'm away have been talking an hour and twenty five years. Good though, I'm enjoying it this way. No, No, it's great, it's all good. It's all good.

Um. There's there's often been this need to sort of strive towards photo realism with visual effects, and I was talking he was like talking to the other day. Maybe it was Gene BOLTI or maybe it was Steve Williams. I can't remember. One of my recent interviews, I kind of said, I wondered if at some point visual effects a kind of plateau, and then there'll be more kind of there'll be more interest for directors to kind of create a stylized world that couldn't exist in our world.

How do you feel about where does where do you kind of draw the line between those two and where does your your joba ilm sit between those two things? Well, I mean that's one of the nice things. But working at the end on the animation end of things, is that, Yeah, you can have cartoony animation in the midst of the completely otherwise realistic setting. You can have super realistic animation, but with a real stylized rendering. Look, you know, there's there's all those things are really you can mix it all up.

It's true that visual effects remains mostly focused on realism, mainly because you know, the essence of the job is still to combine our synthetic image with film with live action footage. If the live action footage is itself isn't highly startlised it sometimes it is. You know, there are films that have really heightened stylized looks in terms of just in terms of the lighting and all that, and so that when it comes to the visual effects we have to kind of mesh into that. But in terms of visual effects sort of reaching a creative plateau, I think that's only limited by filmmakers imaginations. I think we're always here in game to do whatever.

In fact, we welcome that because as you as you point out, most of our work is photorealistic or what passed us with photo realistic um. And and so when we get the opportunities like Raino Verstance to do stuff that's not exactly realistic, it's kind of a weird stylized version of reality. UM. That's super fun for us. It's it's great um.

And it's really just dependent on the filmmakers honestly, their imagination and what they what they bring test um. You know, there's a term that's become popular. You know, I hear a buzzword I hear a lot in the rendering community in the last few years, which is NPR, which is Sandsford non photorealistic, and it's a it's a whole area of rendering looks that's become super hot and since, um, a little before, but one of the things that really kicked it off was the Spider Man into that h the Spider Verse Spider Peter Ramsey. Um, amazing, beautiful, credible look that that film had. That really took away from what, you know, what, we're beginning to look more and more real in terms of lighting and texture in animated features like the Picture films and Disney feature especially, We're really getting more and more.

Characters were still sort of classically animated looking, but the textures and the lighting and the richness and the photographic feeling of it was getting warmer real and those guys just often whole other direction with the comic book layering and the dot screening and all that stuff, and the way the characters moved and yeah, weirdly it had to kind of stop motion look to it as well, didn't it. I watched a stream of it as one of my friends reviews movies, and we were kind of getting this working okay initially because it just had such a dialized look to it, but soon fell in love with it. Actually, Yeah, yeah, and and um, you know, they didn't use motion blower and they I don't know, it was just amazing and they really they had an ethos on the filments.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it. They flipped that on its head. Their idea was like, let's just sort of just rush everything, um, which is amazing because you know, there's always budget and time to be considered, and you're always being asked to kind of fit into a box. And they just really went for it on that film, and I was so inspiring. Anyways, what now when I go to conferences, uh that are about animation and effects them and all those areas, a lot of it people are talking about MPR, NPR, NPR.

So can you see a lot of projects short films and other features and things that have really interesting look well put some boots. Actually, I haven't seen the film yet, but I've seen a bunch of clips from trailers that it's just, let's gorgeous and it's not at all, And it's very much that this MPR thing of graphic looks and and the stuff. You know. I always used to lament that if you looked at the art of book for a given animated feature, that the design work that the character designs and the environment artwork always looks so rich and illustrative, and you can see the texture of the charcoal on the paper or whatever medium they were using, even it was digital sort of emulating that. And then you get to the film and they all kind of were starting to feel more and more sort of polished and realistic ish and beautiful full, but they didn't have that texture of the thing.

And and MPR is really bringing that into films, and Spider Verse put some boods films like that, or just you look at them and they look like those rich drawings and from the art of book, and I love it. I absolutely love it. Now how that stuff will affect us in visual effects, probably a lot less, because again, you need a movie that was you need a reason to not have things look real, you know, lie in the midst of a live action movie. But that that does happen. Um Life Aquatic Island.

It m visual effects for Life Aquatic and that wasn't CG work. That was they did stop motion for some of the shot see Creatures. Yeah, that's an example where even though it's a live action film, did redactor you know, Wes Anderson this case wanted those little moments to be something other than realistic. Yeah, it's kind of weird, little magic to them and that happens, and that's cool, that's great. We love them and that stuff comes along and get a chance to listen things.

I said that was my last question, didn't I We could leave it there, But there was one other thing I just wanted to ask quickly on You're quite active on social media and you've become kind of a de facto kind of ILM ambassador on Twitter. People fire questions that you you kind of dig out information and you know, tad a series are actual ambassadors to Twitter ambassador. But but I might like the deputy in Battle with the Deputy. Yeah, is that a role that you kind of enjoy? It feels like because I think before we started recording, I said to you know, it feels like you're still a fan as much as the fans are.

Yeah, you're kind of on the inside and yeah, it's nice that you're kind of projecting that back out from from the inside of the company. Yeah, it's a it's a bunch of things. One of them. One of the things is, yeah, I am a fan and I like to engage with other people who are excited about the work in the same way that I am. Um, and I feel grateful to be able to share stuff that folks are privy too.

Um. And that's fun, you know. Um. The the other aspect of it, though, is I just I really dislike disinformation. I don't mean intentional disinforma riage and I mean the wrong story getting spread about how an effect was done or whatever, and completely innocuous.

I'm not even talking about malicious stuff. I'm just you know, it just booked to me when I see like, oh yeah, that was done, well it was I oh wow, No, that's not exactly. That's not all that was that. And I'm not interested in like shaming people or being or making people feel dumb. I just want to correct things when I see that they're that when I know they're not right, and I just I'm like, and I know I have the information, I'm like, oh wait, hang on, let me just just correct you now.

Um. And that can sound sort of like the comic book guy on the Simpsons, you know, web you push it out my glass as well. Actually I need above and I hope I try never to be that guy, but um, but you know, I do it just just gets under my skin when I see it, especially if it's like an oft repeated misappropriation of information that I've seen a hundred times. I'm always like, oh, no, that's not how that's not what happened there. This is let me, let me, let me explain, um.

And so that for the other part of it is I kind of hope to bring a little clarity to certain topics, uh that they get that they show up occasionally, you know, about around visual effects and stuff, you know, and some people have things they like to talk like Todd. We we I ripped Todd about this, but you know, one of Todd's uh things is to you know, turning motion smoothing off on the TV. And and then of course and this is and this is one that I'm right there with him on that one too. But this this other one is, um, this thing of sort of talking about movies and saying, oh, you know, they didn't use any digital effects and that it was all done for real like that the whole world of film commentary.

We're both warriors in the fight to correct that. When you know, uh, it's when it's just a marketing, Yeah, there's less of what it is. It is Now there's times when it's it's a valid thing to say about a movie that, like, for instance, Top Cut, it's perfectly appropriate to say, hey, we put actors in planes and we shot as much as this possibly could for real. But would people say, oh, yeah, it's all real, and you know, no, I know the I know that people who did the visual effecting. I could tell you how hard they worked on it, and I'm you know, it's like and you know, I'm sure we'd much rather that there was a that the marketing message was our practical effects folks work together with our digital effects teams to bring you this from them.

I get that sometimes it's punchier and better to just say, you know, look at these amazing stunts and all that, because the stunts are amazing, and it is amazing when Tom Cruise, like, I love what he does. Actually, I think this whole thing that he does where he gets excited about a stunt and he makes it happen. But then they also publicize it ahead of time, because I honestly, if they didn't publicize it ahead of time, people would just assume it was digital because yeah, that's the world live it. So you have to publicize it ahead of side, ahead of time, and also just gets people excited about the movie. And I also understand that on a gut level, if people understand that there was a human person at risk in the middle of this crazy stime, that's engaging him in a way that's super important and vital and primary.

And I recognize all that. I agree with it, like, yeah, these managed to kind of regenerate that kind of feeling used to get, Like I mean, I think you're about eight or nine years older than me, but the feeling I used to get watching those TV specials of you know, the Biggest bung Stung Today or whatever, you know, and you'd be like, Wow, I want to see this movie now. And I think, you know, for all of his shortcomings Tom Cruise, you know, other parts of his life, I think the man has some genius about him for sure, because he understands the machine of filmmaking perfectly. He's so dedicated to what he does, an he's so good and anyways, to me, that's like the good end of that thing of like pushing the practical over the bad end.

Is there are folks who kind of it feels like they should have just chasing Street cred with film nerds by you know, Oh yeah, we didn't use any We're not doing any CGI on this film. We're gonna and they always say CGI instead of to CG or computer graphics or whatever. We're just chlop back because honestly, that's what it is. It's a whole bunch of different tools whatever. Yeah.

Do you know one of the films that recently I was amazed by was everything everywhere all at once. Some of the simple solutions to things that they came up with, Like there's that chef scene and they just kind of punched in a couple of grabs of a pepper and kind of painted in a bit of reflection on it and then key frond. It just simple stuff. And that's the That's the thing that is the answer to all of these questions, isn't it really? Which is you know, do what is the best tool you know that's available to you at the time for the budget, the fits within your budget and achieves what you want to achieve.

Yeah, exactly so. And we're you know, those of us who work entirely and CG, we're Nothing makes us happier than to have real world stuff to anchor our visual effects too, so to whatever extent in terms of cost, time, safety, that things can be done for real and shot on location. We're we're like, yeah, dude, please do and then we'll do whatever you know you can't do because it's much harder for us to do things that are just one hundred where everything in the frame is CG. That's that's the hardest thing to do. Um, it's still necessary a fair amount at the time, but um, but we're we're happy to We love, you know, partnering with physical effects and stunts and all the other departments on that work that we do.

It's not an US or them situation. Well, I hope you enjoyed my chatlore with HOW. Thanks to how for giving your time. I really enjoyed chatting with you. I am going to go and watch Rango again.

I hope it's on Disney Plus, I haven't seen it since its release. And also hope that Drew of Star Wars Visual Comparisons that you liked hearing some more details about the Jabba the Hut scene. You're very welcome. Next up on the podcast was due to be composed of Stu Phillips. Unfortunately I had to cancel again.

At last minute because my internet connection was down planned maintenance apparently, but neither me nor my wife knew anything about it. So I hope Stue and I can find another date to chat. But I do fear that I've had to cancel on him a couple of times now, and yeah, that can be annoying for somebody on the other end of it. So apologies, Stue, and I hope we can, as I say, find some time to do it in the future. Yesterday I recorded a conversation with a legendary Ken Ralston, visual effects artist and supervisor, Oscar Winner Stars alumni and a name that I've known since I reckon I was about five or six years old, and it was an absolute treat.

So that'll be the second episode of February twenty twenty three. After that, I have filmmaker Patrick read Johnson on to talk about his Filmy five seventy seven. It's been a long time coming, the film and the interview, and then it's the turn of Van Ling visual effects supervisor, James Cameron, collaborator and also LaserDisc and DVD producer. I think of that Abyss LaserDisc which kind of blew my mind when I was a young man looking forward to getting into more research on Van in the coming days. Certainly a very interesting guy looking forward to our chat regarding the Joel's documentary.

Flights to the US are now booked for me and Patrick, my co director, from our own pocket. As I mentioned before on the previous episode, we have four interviews lined up, hoping to arrange more, but it's proving to pin people down. I guess it's quite late on but this is the only window we've kind of got at the moment to get it done. But yeah, we'll come away with some more interviews with Joe and with three or four other people as well. So we hope to return home in mid March with plenty of material to get the edit going in a more concerted kind of definite way.

At the moment, it's a lot of ideas flying around, but we really want to get that timeline going. Thanks as always for your support for the podcast. Thanks to those of you that left a review on Apple Podcasts, which I recently asked if people could do, or via a tweet, I sent some of you some filming mentories goodies for doing that lovely favor for me, and it's amazing to see the effect that it's had in terms of seeing my thumbnail or tile for the episode kind of move up a little bit. So if you can, I appreciate more of that. Please leave review when you can, and as I said, tell anybody that you know that might be into the podcast.

I mean, come on, look at that list of guests. I mean it's even I'm kind of blown away. Anyway, thanks for joining me and I hope you can do so again for the next episode of the Film We Mentors Podcast