DP: Do you have any bits of advice for those interested in lighting and compositing as a career?

JB: It seems like attitude is everything, and our industry is one where you can’t just rest on your laurels. You can’t just get settled in. Regardless of how long you’ve been at it, things are always changing and you have to keep your skills up to date. That’s the scary thing, since you can easily get left in the dust if you don’t keep your skills current. There are new kids always coming out of school who are willing to do the hours and learn the new tools. I always like when the artists themselves will take the initiative to actually help improve the process. That helps a lot. Instead of just complaining about it, they ask how they can make it better. A lot of the tools and improvements we have here are because of people who have taken that initiative. Some of the lighting tools that you aren’t even aware of happened that way. There are artists whose job it was to get the shot out and they stopped and figured out they could be more efficient if they were able to create a new way. They did it, and we put it in the pipeline.

We’re getting close. It’s going to be incredibly different five, let alone 10 years from now. People could become less skilled because of what we want. We want faster, easier tools. OK, if it’s faster and easier then you probably don’t need people who are as smart and experienced. There will probably be a shift, and there already has been, since ten years ago you needed programmers. Now we’re getting more of a true artist pool and that’s a good thing. I think people are tired of banging their head on the box right now. When you look at a movie script and the required special effects, the technical hurdles are always in your head. You ask, “Can we do that and can we do it for the money?” When I talk to directors, I don’t even want to hear that. At some point, the director will be able to tell us what he wants to see, and we’ll have the tools to quickly figure out a way to do it. There’ll be nothing we can’t do and it won’t cost a billion dollars. We’ll have the technology and the speed. Every show we figure one more thing out. Before Stuart, somebody figured out hair, and then on Stuart, we included hair and made it work with our pipeline. We made a lot of improvements to hair and different hair styles on Potter. With cloth, it’s the same thing. Five years ago, every CG character was in spandex and shaved. Skin is not perfect, but by the next project with a digital human, it’ll start to get perfect and it’ll start to get faster and cheaper. Fire is probably not perfect. Water’s getting better. Nature is built-up of all these elements that we’re slowly nailing down one by one. Fifteen years ago it was marble or something simple. 20 years ago it was plastic and steel. As we start to add all of these to our list of accomplishments, we’ll be able to make whatever we want. Then it’ll be completely creative. The question can simply be asked, “What do you want to do?” Maybe we want to go off in some weird galaxy and see some creatures and phenomena that only exist as a vision in a director’s mind. People could do whatever they want and express themselves any way they want. They wouldn’t have to worry about budgetary constraints, getting it done on time, or even being able to do it at all. That’s coming around the corner. We’re getting there. On Stuart Little 2 we had to do a bird, so now there are feathers. There’s a whole different bag of problems. Not that’s done and as long as we don’t have fish or something, and the next film is the exact same thing, then that would be relatively cheap to do and we would be able to accurately schedule and budget it. Then you could potentially come down to a 40-hour workweek. Why not? When you sit there and try to figure out a show like Potter, it’s a huge challenge. We had to do 14 digital kids with flowing robes and hair and this and that. We had no way of doing flowing, moving, dynamic hair, specific hairstyles or 14 simulated robes at once. We had to budget time and money for all of these tools that we didn’t even know how we were going to make. So, if you take all of that out of the way, it becomes so much easier. Each show you have less and less to figure out, hopefully, and eventually in ten years it’ll all be figured out. We’ll continue to optimize, and once it gets completely optimized, it gets less technical and more creative. Then it’ll be fun.

To learn more about lighting and compositing and other topics of interest to animators, check out Inspired 3D Lighting and Compositing by David Parrish; series edited by Kyle Clark and Michael Ford: Premier Press, 2002. 266 pages with illustrations. ISBN 1-931841-49-7. ($59.99) Read more about all four titles in the Inspired series and check back to VFXWorld frequently to read new excerpts.

Dave Parrish (left) author, Mike Ford (center) series editor and Kyle Clark (right) series editor.

David Parrish went straight to work for Industrial Light & Magic after earning his master’s degree from Texas A&M University. During the five years that followed, he worked on several major films, including Dragonheart, Return of the Jedi: Special Edition, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace, Deep Blue Sea, Galaxy Quest and The Perfect Storm. After five years with ILM and a short stay with a startup company, he was hired by Sony Pictures Imageworks to work on Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Series editor Kyle Clark is a lead animator at Microsoft’s Digital Anvil Studios and co-founder of Animation Foundation. He majored in film, video and computer animation at USC and has since worked on a number of feature, commercial and game projects. He has also taught at various schools, including San Francisco Academy of Art College, San Francisco State University, UCLA School of Design and Texas A&M University.

Michael Ford, series editor, is a senior technical animator at Sony Pictures Imageworks and co-founder of Animation Foundation. A graduate of UCLA’s School of Design, he has since worked on numerous feature and commercial projects at ILM, Centropolis FX and Digital Magic. He has lectured at the UCLA School of Design, USC, DeAnza College and San Francisco Academy of Art College.