In a very well-attended panel at SIGGRAPH on Wednesday, former ILM artists Rob Coleman (STAR WARS: EPISODES I, II, III), Jamy Wheeler (PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST, STAR WARS: EPISODES II, III), John Helms (ERAGON, STAR WARS: EPISODE III) and Tim Naylor (TRANSFORMERS, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST) regaled an attentive audience with the story of their creation of Lightstream Animation Studio, which they started from scratch after leaving the Lucas fold.
Alternating between nuts-and-bolts tech talk and personal testimony about the importance of mutual support, valuing individuals and "checking your ego at the door," the panelists traced their journey from being a group of friends who met for lunch once a week and shared their dreams of telling great stories, to their creation of a small self-contained studio with a Mac OS X pipeline and an animated feature in the works.
The presentation was supported by an array of often amusing projected images, including photos of the world-class animation professionals painting their new office, or the team acquiring live-action reference footage by shooting from a ladder mounted in the back of a pickup truck. The projections were also used to highlight key points, including Lightstream's three stated goals of (1) telling great stories, (2) building a healthy culture, and (3) producing quality images.
In explaining the decision to go with a Mac pipeline, they explained that it was chosen because of its multi-platform capabilities (if something didn't work out, they could reboot in a different system), the desire to provide artists with a Unix environment, and the ability to run such programs as Final Cut Pro and Photoshop as native applications. One panelist also alluded to the "Southwest Airlines model," noting that Southwest flies only one type of aircraft -- thus allowing pilots, mechanics, etc. to know their equipment inside and out. The same is true of the computer equipment.
The final part of the session was devoted to THE FOURTH MAGI, Lightstream's feature-in-development, which is being directed by veteran Australian theater director Paul Currie. The panelists cited many influences for the adventure film set in Biblical times, including such disparate sources as Orientalist paintings, BLADE RUNNER and GLADIATOR. They talked about the ways in which their experiences working on the STAR WARS films and, in Naylor's case, TRANSFORMERS, helped them make decisions for THE FOURTH MAGI, including the decision to focus their toolsets on character. They also mentioned the importance of developing good vendor relationships, citing in particular the help they've received from Autodesk. Among the problems discussed was the perennial issue of rendering, as well as more mundane concerns such as file naming and a navigation system to keep track of assets.
The presentation culminated with a sneak peek of the promo for THE FOURTH MAGI. The filmmakers pointed out that the two minutes of animation included 25 shots -- about 1,000,000 frames -- that were created by 21 artists in five months on 17 Macs using nine RenderMan licenses. The production had a 99.6% uptime. Oh, and the camel hair count was 2.5 million.
--By AWN Interim Editor Jon Hofferman
