would just be
a speck on the screen.
The group soon realized
it would take not thousands,
but millions of triangles
to create the photo-realistic images
that compose
the animated films we see today.
It was an absurd number.
But it was meant to be
an absurd number,
because if you throw
some big numbers at something
and then you have to be able
to handle them,
then it makes you think
about the problem in different ways.
Right then and there, that changed
our whole, you know, kind of mindset
about the sort of problem
that we were trying to solve.
The group got the chance
to prove their abilities
when Lucas' special-effects division,
Industrial Light and Magic,
could not achieve a shot
using conventional film means.
Summary, please.
STAR TREK II THE WRATH OF KHAN
Alvy Ray Smith led the group
to create a spectacular sequence
using all their talents
and advanced techniques.
The camera's spinning and spiraling
and jerking and panning.
It's going through amazing motions,
completely impossible
for a gravity-bound, real camera.
I think Ed and Alvy realized,
in order to get in the game,
we've got to put characters up
on the screen,
and that meant character animation,
and that changed everything
right there.
I had gone to this computer graphics
conference at the Queen Mary.
I'll never forget it. We walk in
and I was just so depressed,
'cause, like, all these dreams
for the last two or three years
kind of were shattered.
And Ed Catmull
was a speaker at this conference,
and he comes up
and he was so excited,
"How's Toaster going?
How's Brave Little Toaster going?"
You know, all that stuff, and I go,
"Well, to be honest, they shelved it. "
He told me that he was leaving Disney.
He didn't tell me the circumstances,
but that he was leaving Disney.
And we spent a long time
talking about what we wanted to do,
and what the possibilities were,
because this is the first time
we really had a chance
of getting a real animator.
We couldn't get them at Lucasfilm.
John was hired
on the spot
into Lucasfilm's
Bay Area computer division,
under the inconspicuous title
of "interface designer. "
I came in there and immediately
I was intimidated by all the people
that were around me.
I mean, there were PhDs
everywhere around me.
Our group was in love with animation,
and we knew a lot about animation.
We couldn't animate very well,
but we understood it.
And the first thing they did
is they really challenged me
with the idea of,
"Let's try to do a little film
"with characters that are done
with a computer. "
I was inspired looking at the limitations
of what I had to work with,
and then I went back
and looked at the early Mickey Mouse.
It's geometric shapes.
How more geometric can you get
than Mickey Mouse?
So I just started drawing,
and I created this little character.
His name is "Andre."
John inspired the
technical team to create new software
that would enable him to animate
the squash and stretch movements
he learned from traditional animation.
The results were new flexibility,
motion blur
and character action never before
achieved through the computer.
I loved working with these
guys, and I kept challenging them.
And then I was so inspired
by all the work that they were doing.
So it's become this way of working
that the art challenges technology,
technology inspires the art.
John and computer
scientist Bill Reeves
put their animation skills to the test
while working with Lucas'
traditional special effects division, ILM,
to bring a stained-glass man to life
through the computer.
It was really amazing,
the meeting of these two completely
different backgrounds coming together.
You could just design
the thing exactly
the way that your mind conceived it,
not only shape-wise
but also lighting-wise, or anything.
The visual effects were
nominated for an Academy Award,
and many Hollywood
special effects wizards
had no idea how it was