DESIGN DIARY - 11.01.00 Its Majesty Industrial Light & Magic If digital imagery had its own monarchy, Industrial Light & Magic would have at least one hand on the throne. Famous for having resurrected the special effects industry when George Lucas founded it in the 70's to realize his vision for Star Wars, ILM has since remained a leader in the realm of digital wizardry. And today we have a special visitor here at Decipher: Alex Lindsay, a seasoned digital artist who's a veteran of both the Star Wars Art Department up in Skywalker Ranch, and the stand-alone miracle shop called Industrial Light & Magic, lost amidst the cityscape of downtown San Rafael, in California. Alex started working at Skywalker Ranch in spring of 1996, busying himself with the creation of animatics, which are short animated sequences used to visualize complex scenes before the actual shooting begins. He worked on such mini-movies for the podrace, the ground battle and other action-heavy scenes fin The Phantom Menace. A year and a half later, Alex moved on to ILM, where he put his artistic skills to work on the post-production of Episode I. He's the only person who got to do heavy-duty work for the new Star Wars movie on both sides of the fence - in pre-production and post-production. Finally, in fall of 1999, Alex left ILM to start his own company, dvGARAGE. Did I mention he was also a senior columnist for 3D Design Magazine? This Lindsay guy is one busy man. Always interested in digital prowess, Alex is here to visit our 3D modeling and rendering facilities. There's nothing else like it in all of Norfolk. Joe is our tour guide and he starts the show on the Product Development floor. There, Alex is introduced to our game designers, and our CCG Director of Sales Dean Irwin shows up to help Alex get more acquainted with the whole concept of trading card games. Alex is obviously pleased to get more background on the phenomenon. "Now I can relate a lot more to the beautiful Jedi Knights cards I've seen on your web site," he says. Then it's off to the Marketing and Web departments, where Alex meets various members of the Decipher family. Bravo Leader Kevin Reitzel asks him about the legendary ILM Halloween parties, to which Alex replies with a few fascinating (and sometimes outright incredible) anecdotes. The year Toy Story came out, for instance, some guys dressed up as the "claw" vending machine with the little green aliens inside. The whole machine was about 20 feet tall, and there was a guy up in the structure, dangling from the claw.... In the Art Department, Alex really gets down to it. He's shown a ton of images currently in the works for Jedi Knights, short animated clips, wireframe models (the complex ones make my brain hurt) and a secret project (for Jedi Knights) that's so cool I can't talk about it yet. Seriously, I'll spill the beans as soon as Management stops showing me a pink slip with my name on it. Being on the tour with Alex (that's one of the rewarding aspects of my job), I manage to take a first look at some of the most challenging models being developed for the game. Main characters, in particular, are very impressive. So is the Millennium Falcon. And some renderings of starship cockpits, built by a Russian aeronautics engineer, just blow my mind. And this is where I get lost. I think I'm a fairly intelligent guy, and I've tackled difficult concepts and projects before. But get two or more 3D computer artists together, and my I.Q. drops below sea level. I can follow the conversation for about five minutes, and then I slip into a semi-coma. The jargon is way too technical for me to even try to make it look like I understand what's going on. So while those guys are enjoying themselves (and believe me, they really are), let me tell you a little bit about Alex's new company. dvGARAGE is really more about "information dissemination" (as Alex likes to put it) than anything else. Alex and his associates - all CGI masters from companies such as ILM and Digital Domain - are building an extensive network of affiliates that literally spans the globe: North America, Europe, Latin America, South Asia, Africa, and so on. Their goal is to teach anyone interested in learning the trade of the digital artist. dvGARAGE achieves this through seminars, one-on-one training sessions and online tutorials accessible through their web site, which should be up and running next week (dvgarage.com). "We want to teach people everything they need," explains Alex. "We don't hold anything back. No 'secret trick' or private technique. We give people everything. We don't play fair," Alex concludes with a laugh. dvGARAGE uses its network to make sure that affiliates' problems are quickly solved, and also makes use of its extensive resources to generate work for newly trained digital artists. When Alex gets together with the artists from A.S. Imagined, I'm lost in technical wonderland again. But I do get to look at more pretty pictures. One of them is an astounding model of the Endor bunker. "Our problem with this model," says Joe, "is that it looks too good. Shrunken to card size, it looks like an actual photo! I'll have to go in and key up the color and lighting so it'll mesh with the stylized look of Jedi Knights." Alex is delighted with what he sees, especially the astounding model of the Death Star trench. I've seen many behind-the-scenes materials at Lucasfilm but I never saw the trench from those angles. I can't wait to see the finished images. Before he leaves, Alex asks our artists if he can show them one of his dvGARAGE web tutorials and use the assembled creative minds, as it were, as a focus group. Everyone accepts wholeheartedly, so Alex whips out his Powerbook. The tutorial is a big success with the group and you can all expect to see it soon on dvgarage.com. I can't guarantee that everything will make sense to you, but it sure looks pretty. Francis K. Lalumiere The Juggler