Technical Animation Supervisor James Tooley. © 1999 Industrial Light & Magic. Photo Courtesy of David Owen & Sean Casey.

Lots of Helping Hands
The key to this production's success was careful planning and ILM having a well-seasoned staff. Coleman concentrated his efforts on directing the performances of the digital actors. He divided the animation production staff into teams. For example, some of the artists spent two years animating Jar Jar Binks, a leading character. Coleman says, "This way I didn't have to teach all 45 animators how to animate every character."

Coleman worked closely with Scott Squires, John Knoll, and Dennis Muren, the feature's three visual effects supervisors. The four men met with George Lucas on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 9 to 11. They would review the film's progress and depending upon what was being discussed they would invite other key people to take part in the meeting.

The labor of the three visual effects supervisors was divided so each worked on specific parts of the film. For example, Dennis Muren supervised the underwater city scenes, John Knoll supervised the space battle sequences, and Scott Squires supervised the Queen's city and the Jedi battle in the energy room.

About half way into the production Tom Bertino was brought on board to supervise the ground battle animation. The sequence contains 7000 characters including alien creatures and robotic warriors. Bertino, who has a long list of ILM credits, joined the company in 1986 as supervisor of the rotoscope department. He is presently the animation director on an untitled digital Frankenstein feature being created at ILM for Universal. Coleman says Bertino was a "tremendous help" to the Star Wars project.

Coleman also worked daily with several other key people. Geoff Campbell was head of modeling. Tim McLaughlin was enveloping supervisor (muscles and fabrics), and James Tooley was the lead technical animator. Jeff Light was the key motion capture supervisor. Motion capture proved to be very valuable for analyzing complicated actions. The Droid soldiers were based on motion capture data. That gave them a smooth mechanical movement while the organic creatures in the battle were animated by hand and had a more lyrical movement to them.

Creature Developer Supervisor Tim McLaughlin. © 1999 Industrial Light & Magic. Photo Courtesy of David Owen & Sean Casey.

Converging Talents
While most people have some idea about what animators do, Coleman pointed out that there are dozens of other hands that touch each shot of film before it is released. What an animator moves on a computer screen is also the work of a design team, model builders, painters, composite artists and other artists/technicians.

Important contributions were made by the computer technical staff. Coleman says, "Digital techniques improved as the show progressed. When we started the show we knew we couldn't do clothing as realisticly as we wanted. We have a great software department so we were confident they could do what was needed. We knew we were going to do a ground battle with 7000 characters.

We couldn't actually do that in 1997 when we started the movie, but by 1999 we could. We saved those shots `til the end of the production. Luckily we made it!"

Coleman also discusses the importance of the composite people and rotoscope artists who still do a lot of work by hand. To keep track of everything there were three composite supervisors on the film and each had a staff under them to gather and organize all the art elements needed. ILM's high-end composite system, called Sabre System, along with a lower resolution system for tests and preliminary work, proved to be reliable workhorses. Both systems were developed at the studio.

Coleman also spoke highly of ILM administrators. "It was a well organized production. Our producers are very skilled at determining what we have to do and when Even though we worked very hard and long days (8 a.m. to 7 at night), I rarely worked more than five days a week. I did do a stretch of six Saturdays in a row, but I never worked around the clock 7 days a week. It doesn't do any good if we burn out the talent. We need everybody at their top to do this kind of work. This company is sensitive to that. I've worked at small studios where it was do 100 percent or 110 percent for the whole project and not pay anyone for overtime. It's not like that here. They pay for the overtime and they want you to go home so you are well rested. It is a great place!"