When Scott Trowbridge was looking for a digital effects house to help him bring Spider-Man to life, he turned to the Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company. Founded in 1987 by Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak, Kleiser-Walczak has remained on the leading edge of the computer generated animation and visual effects field, working for feature films, special venue attractions and commercials. Ranging from mainstream features like Stargate, Clear and Present Danger and Honey, I Blew up the Kid to the evolving digital opera Monsters of Grace, Kleiser-Walczak is a special company that mixes computer animation and technology with a creative, new age, artistic atmosphere. With offices in Hollywood and Manhattan, the company is headquartered at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), which is a new, multi-disciplinary super collider for the arts that is revitalizing the old mill town of North Adams in the Northern Berkshires.

Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak. Image courtesy of Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company.

Together, Kleiser and Walczak directed the amazing footage that amusement park attendees are going to be able to experience at Universal's $2.6 billion Islands of Adventure. Kleiser-Walczak produced all of the animation and developed the new "squinching" technology that makes The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man the next evolutionary step in the ride-film arena, and is sure to blow the socks off its riders. Kleiser and Walczak talk about their own adventures in bringing about their contribution to this new ride spectacular.

Heather Kenyon: How did Kleiser-Walczak get involved with this project?

Jeff Kleiser: We met the Universal design team headed up by Scott Trowbridge and discussed the creative and technical challenges of Spider-Man, and there was instant chemistry. We had solved many difficult technical problems for Doug Trumbull in a variety of film formats including stereography, and had demonstrated the ability to create super hero characters with life-like movement. We promised that we would dedicate a crack team of animators for the entire lifetime of the project (three years) to pull it off, and Universal gave us the contract.

HK: What were the advantages Kleiser-Walczak could offer Universal?

Diana Walczak: Kleiser-Walczak offered a very strong creative team. Our production designer, Kent Mikalsen, led the design of the environments. We convinced Universal to change their plan to keep the environments highly simplified and stylized as they are in actual comic books, to what we call a "comic book reality" which was accomplished by including more realistic textures with a surrealistically skewed color lighting palette. The final integrated sets were built to match our environments and were greatly enhanced by large scale printouts of environment imagery also provided by Kleiser-Walczak.

JK: We were also able to attack their problems with the full force of our company, which includes some of the most capable technical and creative minds in the field. Our team includes special software programmer Frank Vitz, previously with Robert Abel and Associates; technical supervisor Jeffery A.Williams, from Editel, Chicago; and lead animator Derald Hunt, from Turner Broadcasting. Our headquarters in Western Massachusetts provided a secure and isolated production environment in which the project could be produced far from the prying eyes in Hollywood. Our Hollywood studio allowed Universal personnel to keep track of where we were headed interactively. The combination of large format stereoscopic experience and top quality human figure animation coupled with excellent technical expertise made Kleiser-Walczak the natural choice for this unique project.

Concept drawing for basic set design and scene inventory by art director Kent Mikalsen. © Universal Studios Escape; image courtesy of Kleiser-Walczak.