Category Archives: Uncategorized
Star Tours and Me.
I was digging through some old papers the other day and I came across an envelope I thought had disappeared more than 40 years ago. I have thought about this every once in a while, especially while I was working on the update to Star Tours years ago. It was the winter of 1978, my family had just been on our first trip to Disneyland and when we’d gotten home, my brother and I had a great idea that we were sure no one had thought of.
We had seen Star Wars that last summer ( without a doubt, that totally changed my life). After coming back from Disneyland (which also made a huge impression on me), we figured wouldn’t it be awesome to combine the two? Jon and I brainstormed for probably a whole afternoon and came up with a crazy idea. What if there was a Star Wars Ride at Disneyland?
(Yes, my spelling was atrocious back then and has only got slightly better)
What followed was a detailed (well detailed for a 10 and 7 year old) blueprint for a Star Wars ride, complete with a walk past various characters and vehicles as you waited in line for the ride. This by itself would not have stuck much in my mind, but what I came up with for the end always made me realize I was thinking far ahead of what a “normal” 10 year old might come up with.
As you near the end of the ride, you’d get into an X-wing (10 year old me was not concerned with moving volumes of people through a ride at a reasonable rate). I didn’t know what a motion simulator was at the time, but that was the basic idea. The ship would move around as you steer it with a joystick.
You would fly the X-Wing towards a huge rear projection screen and personally blow up the Death Star. I get that it’s not EXACTLY like what they ended up creating, but to me it was eerily similar to the idea I had as a young boy.
In Disney’s defense, the fine people at Imagineering never saw this. When my mother gave me the letter years later, she told me it was returned with a short note from Disney Legal that said basically “Don’t send us this kind of stuff”. So even though our crude idea did not actually bring about Star Tours, I still like to think that even as a young boy, I had the ideas and imagination to eventually make it in this wonderful field. I did end up working on updated Star Tours ride where I did the lighting and rendering of the Naboo section (and I maybe one other? - it’s been a while) as well as some of the holograms that pop up in-between sections. I also rendered most of the elements you see while you’re getting instructions before the ride.
Star Tours was first proposed in 1979 and eventually opened in 1987.
Star Trek Continues
This was a great little non-profit indy project that I was lucky enough to get involved with.
Here’s some more info about what I did for this show: To Boldly Go : Part 2
What’s going on here?
Looks like nothings happened for the last several years… Guess I should post an update.
It was 20 years ago today, that ILM asked me to come and play….
It was the cold, wet winter of 1995 when I started at Industrial Light & Magic. I remember my first days so clearly. I was stationed in an old audio recording room called “Mix B”, so far away from the rest of the company that no one might even accidentally walk by. The training instructor walked in that first day, dropped a stack of papers on my desk, said “Don’t eat at Foodles” ( a local restaurant) and walked out. Thus began my training. I started with compositing since I had just been doing that at PDI. Their text file based approach was very similar to what I had already learned. The elements I was given to work with were a sunset beach background, a dinosaur rendered in bright sunlight and a cartoon carrot. I don’t think any compositor could ever make these disparate images look like they were part of the same scene. After a couple of days of this I tracked down Sandy Karpman who was the CG Supervisor on Congo (the show that I was going on to after training). I asked if she could give me a real shot to train with so that I might at least have some elements that were intended to work together. Four days later I finaled my first ILM shot.
Since those first days, I’ve seen so many friends come and go. Some moving on to bigger and better things, some leaving the business entirely and some passing away. I’ve learned so much from the wonderfully talented people I work with everyday. Having no formal training, I literally learned about computer graphics on the job. So to everyone who has helped me along the way and who continue to answer my questions, I’d like to say “Thank You” for your support and your friendship.
My retirement is secure….
My son ( the math genius) has been telling my wife and me for years that one day he’ll be so rich that he’ll have rooms in his house just for storing his shoes ( separate rooms for left and right by the way). So for Christmas this year, he let us know that he’ll take care of us in our old age by awarding each of us this legally binding certificate…
P.S. I guess he was feeling generous since he moved us up to the right sandal room…
Sting: Back to Bass
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Sting. I love how he has constantly reinvent himself throughout his career.
His styles are so varied as he likes to incorporate distinct elements of jazz, reggae, classical, New Age, and world beat into his music.
The softer side of Sting
Before he joined The Police, he delivered milk with his father, drove a bus, did construction work and was a radio announcer. One of his earliest jobs in radio was actually reading the fishing reports for the Newcastle area.
I believe it was this early radio career that inspired this offbeat duet he included in his 2011 Back to Bass tour.
I was able to get a bootleg copy of the song from a friend of mine. If you didn’t see him on tour, this is the next best thing since I don’t believe he ever released it (or ever will).
I hope you enjoy it.
mrfusion.org 