the search for the holy digital toolbox

This article is about being clever with the tools that you have, in place of the tools that you miss...Or, using the "whatUgotz", better than the "whatzUnogotz".

Isn't it frustrating that what ever amazing animation or idea that you've mapped out in your imagination never really comes out the same in the finished image? Every creator of imagery, sound, and story feels the same thing. What tool was missing to achieve the effect you imagined as opposed to the reality of the result? This sort of thinking in computer graphics and special effects leads to the eternal search for the digital Holy Grail. That is the ultimate combination of software, hardware, brains, and determination...that can never be attained.

standing up to the big ones
Most beginning animators and potential film makers I have met suffer from the same frustration, comparing their own creativity to what they see created for television and film. The same feelings of depression result from trying to imitate effects seen on just about any commercial "demo-reel" with all of the most flashy of effects imaginable. What isn't visible in these packaged forms is the incredible amount of human hours that it requires to produce such flights of fancy.

One of the most ground breaking feats of computer magic was Jurassic Park a seemingly few digital centuries ago. The effects creators of this film, Industrial Light + Magic, invested a huge amount of energy and manpower to create the illusion that was digitally as perfect as it could be. The resulting 6 or more minutes of film were perfect enough to convince the average movie viewer into screams, and enough to piss-off or motivate every other person working in the computer graphics biz to do the same or better. What no one realizes after those short but incredible scenes was that the total investment in human capacity was equal to 450 MAN YEARS of time. Think about that for a minute...talk about time compression! But no matter how you work out the amount of human resources that were required over the actual one and a half years of production, an amazing amount of parallel work energy was required to create the 9,000 frames of effects required for the film. Too much for a single human?...you bet!

realizing your own limitations and exploiting them
Clint Eastwood said, "A man's gotta know his own limitations". This is the way to stand up to those big guys...use the resources you have to their highest degree, and you can achieve amazing results.

Remember that it was only a few years ago that ILM used matte paintings on glass, optical printing effects, and plastic models to achieve the results now emulated in computer graphics. Cheap tricks can look real. It's knowing where and when to apply the tricks necessary to achieve the most elegant and believable results.

After struggling with the most simple resources in my early years, it still irritates me to see production companies with lots of money and expensive equipment wasting their resources by not using them to their full potential. The solution for these companies is to throw money at the problem, in place of problem solving. You can buy all of the computers and toys you may want, but without creativity they are just high tech ego-boosters, or financial black holes. You have to adjust your design priorities to fit your capacity... but based on this you can go far.

Have a good look at the tools you think you have in your toolbox, then think simpler. Sometimes it is question of throwing away an initial complex strategy for a more basic elegant solution. This way of thinking applies from the highest to the lowest levels of production. It doesn't matter what you don't have the, or the "whatzUnogotz"... it is the things that you have, the "whatUgotz", that make it happen. Make it clear that it is not the hardware or the software sitting in front of you, but the soft grey matter sitting between your ears that counts.

re-inventing your universe
As you approach your next visualization challenge, break it down first in the big screen cinema of your mind. Extract the essential elements of the concept, and try to execute them the highest degree of beauty, with the lowest degree of effort...this is the Zen Zone of magic. You don't have the fastest computer, you don't have the best film or video equipment, you don't have a high end scanner and you believe that your equipment is the reason you can't make a perfect scene. Amazing imagery has been producedfor centuries, but only recently in the time-line has digital imagery appeared. The "imagery overload" of the last 20 years produced an amazing technological development explosion that drives people to search for the "Holy Digital Grail". But as you should have learned, the digital grail is in you...not outside of you.


Brian K. Drescher Is a 3D animator and designer currently the director of 3D4Color in Amsterdam. Brian and family now live south of Amsterdam in Kudelstaart. He can be reached by email at bkdresch@xs4all.nl, and has a homepage at www.xs4all.nl/~bkdresch.

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