(Left to right) Motion Capture Supervisor Jeff Light, Technical Animation Supervisor James Tooley and Seth Rosenthal from the Motion Capture Group. © 1999 Industrial Light & Magic. Photo Courtesy of David Owen & Sean Casey.

A Job Well Done
It is fascinating to see CGI develop so rapidly as an art form at ILM. Coleman says, "Lucas crammed so much detail in each scene. It is overwhelming to look back on your two years of work and see how much you crammed into it."

"Can we do almost anything? George and Steven Spielberg, they tend to want you to do almost anything. There is a huge amount of labor that goes into this work. George understands the need to plan shots, but he sometimes pushes you past that, and says, `Figure it out.' We used to have motion control cameras locked down on the set. The amount of freedom now is significantly more than there was five years ago. It gives the director more freedom to tell the story the way he wants to tell it."

"I have loved animation since I was a kid. Once I realized you can do it as a career I was on that path. I've always been fascinated with work that combined animation and live-action. It is magical seeing a real person interacting with an animated character. They pull you and the other audience members into the frame. That is why I love working at ILM. That is what ILM specifically likes to focus on. Anybody in the audience can feel that they can be there in the movie talking to Jar Jar. That is pretty remarkable."

Biographical Notes
Rob Coleman studied experimental animation techniques at Concordia University in Montreal (BFA, 1987). His first commercial work was as an apprentice at a Toronto company producing Captain Power, the first TV show to combine computer animated characters and live-action. In 1989 he worked at the National Film Board of Canada on a project for the World Health Organization. Coleman joined ILM in 1993 to work on The Mask. He was a computer animator on Star Trek Generations and Disclosure in 1994, plus worked on several other features. He was a supervising character animator on Dragonheart (1996), and the animation supervisor on Men in Black (1997).

Dennis Muren worked on the first Star Wars feature as the second cameraman for visual effects. He has since won eight Oscars and was just honored with a star on Hollywood Blvd. This was the first star given for visual effects.

John Knoll is the co-author of Adobe's Photoshop, the industry standard in image processing software. He joined ILM in 1986. He was visual effects supervisor on Star Trek First Contact (1997), Mission Impossible (1996), and Star Trek Generations (1994).

Scott Squires developed the cloud tank effect used in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and was a founder of Dream Quest studios, 1979. He joined ILM in 1985. He was presented a Scientific and Engineering Award for his pioneering work on input scanning by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1994. He was nominated for Oscars for visual effects for The Mask (1994) and Dragonheart (1996).

Karl Cohen is President of ASIFA-San Francisco. His first book, Forbidden Animation: Censored Cartoons and Blacklisted Animators, is published by McFarland Publishers. He also teaches animation history at San Francisco State University.