Ballzy247's SAE Blog: A Highlight in the History of 3D Graphics and Someone Who Has Inspired Me

By James Ball

In this week’s blog post our in class task was to describe a highlight, event or something that just “stands out” for us in the history of 3D Graphics. On top of that, we also have to find and link to the blog of a practitioner who has contributed to a piece of animation or commercial work that inspires us. So let’s begin shall we.

A Highlight in the History of 3D Graphics

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A very important point in the history of 3D graphics . . . even the penicil of 3D graphics itself, would be from the creation of the film Jurassic Park. Even though this film is now 22 years old this year, the 3D graphics that were created for this film by “Industrial Light and Magic”, can still hold up to the scrutiny and High Definition of the silver screen today.

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In an Academy Originals (2014) short documentary titled “Moments That Changed the Movies: Jurassic Park” there is an interview with several people that worked for Industrial Light and Magic and they say the following “When Spielberg originally conceived the movie, he was going to use stop-motion dinosaurs. ILM was tasked with providing motion blur to make them look more realistic. But in their spare time, a few engineers made a fully digital T. Rex skeleton and when the producers saw it, they flipped out and scrapped the stop-motion entirely.” But what happened to Phil Tippett? (AKA the guy in charge of the stop-motion) Well he was put onto the animation team because he was essentially “THE GUY” when it came to this dinosaur movement business for he had studied them all his life.

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This documentary also goes over the balance of Practical v Digital effects that were used in the creation of this film and how out of 15 or so minutes of dinosaur footage shown in the final film 9 minutes was all practical effect and the other 7 was digital.

Practical v Digital . . . now that is a topic I’m gona have to discuss into further detail in its own Blog post in the future I think.

Someone Who Has Inspired Me

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About 4 weeks back when I started this blog, I talked briefly about a person who had inspired me. That person is Aaron Blaise. If you didn’t read that post, I’ll give you a quick summary of what he’s done. Aaron Blaise is the animator who is known for his work on Beast in the film “Beauty and the Beast”, Yao in the film “Mulan”, for being producer and co-director for the film “Brother Bear” and more recently for his 2013 Christmas advert campaign “The Bear and the Hare” for John Lewis UK. He also has his own YouTube channel where he has created his own web series call “Aaron's Art Tips” which is currently in its second season.

On the home page of his website www.creatureartteacher.com , you will find a link to a “tutorials and lessons” page where you can find examples of his work as well as animation lessons and digital painting courses where he teaches you the "how-to's" in an easy to follow series of videos and digital downloads that he has put up an affordable price for the general public to use.

The Following are some examples of his work: