The Pride of the Pioneers

The Pride of the Pioneers
(continued from page 3)

What's next on the horizon?
So if we're not there yet, I'll be at the edge of my seat waiting to know what's next. Some people think that the CG technology search has hit a plateau. To explain this, I have talked with many who have a very definite vision for the future.

Kevin Kain.

"Content! As evidenced by Tron and more recent films such as The Lost World or countless others, if the content of the show isn't enough to pique my interest and make me forget that I'm watching a computer generated film, I'm likely to walk out. Content is king, always. Producers and developers seem to keep forgetting that." - Jon Gilbert
"I think what we're gonna see is a way that computers blend completely into the background. The way that computers actually, will finally become so every-day, so common place, and so ubiquitous that there will be no opportunity for us to think of them as being separate from the normal work that artist and engineers and the rest of us do." - Kevin Kain

Doug Cooper.

"Are we getting to a point or plateau where the tools and development is finally leveling off I don't think so. I think there's so many new things to develop. I just started to see some amazing things being done with painterly style rendering. Stuff that's not photo realistic but is new, expressive, and [creating] artistic ways to represent images. I think there are frontiers that we have not begun to scratch the surface of yet. Not only have we come so far, but we have so much farther to go. It's really exciting!" - Doug Cooper.

We have come a long way in the last 50 years. This well-received documentary may be the first of many films. New challenges will readily be explored in the years ahead since that's what filmmaking is all about. However, now it's not just a few wild horsemen out there on the prairie. The frontier has been opened wide by these pioneers, and The Story of Computer Graphics reminds us of them and that we all need to give our good thanks.

Kellie-Bea Cooper is in the animation and SPFX industry and has produced both traditional animation and computer animation. She has worked for The Baer Animation Company, Jim Henson Interactive, and Warner Bros. TV animation. Kellie-Bea is currently the owner and president of her new studio and school, The Better Mouse Trap.

Diana Cracknell is a student in Loyola Marymount University's animation program, which is a part of the film department.