01/08/2023
Another T2 momento
A press clipping from the
INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
STORY BELOW.....
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
PETER MACDIARMID
Tricks to turn you inside out
By Susan Watts Technology Correspondent
WHEN Arnold Schwarzenegger punches a hole through the head of the deadly android in the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which opens in London this week, he is not just making a mess of his leather gloves. The unprecedented credibility of the stunt stretches animation to its limits, using the latest in com-
puter-generated techniques. "T2", as the industry calls the film, is whispered to have cost
close to a million dollars a minute. Up to 20 per cent of the budget was allocated to getting the special effects right. T-1000, the "character" that plays oppo- site Schwarzenegger, is an an- droid made of shiny, flexible metal. Its ability to mutate and adopt the appearance of real people is central to the plot. If the special effects failed to con- vince, so would the film..
The company charged with
creating T2's visual effects in-. creased its animation staff from eight to 40 to cope. One of the new recruits, Christian Hogue, came from Rushes, the company that animated the talking baby
in this year's census advertise-
ment and the award-winning walking teapot used to advertise decaffeinated tea. Mr Hogue has all the hall-
Arnold Schwarzenegger gets hi-tech aid in a 'Terminator 2' scene used in a video for the film's theme by the group Guns N' Roses
marks of his generation of soft- ware wizards: trendy Captain Kirk outfit, a predominance of matt black in his hi-tech office and the relaxed manner of some- body who has lived on the US West Coast. An affable New Zea- lander who works in London, he was summoned to Hollywood last October by the leading spe- cial effects firm, Industrial Light police officer. and Magic, set up to create effects for the Star Wars films. ILM used two of its most in-
novative techniques for T2. One, called "Make Sticky" and devel- oped specially for the film, in- volves animating a featureless 3D object, then sticking a 2D im- age on top. This lets the anima-
COURTESY GUNS N' ROSES/GEFFEN RECORDS
and stretch the image as you do so. Some sections are of a com- plexity not seen on film before,
using situations that would be difficult to get a real actor to do, but which had to look realistic."
At one point T-1000 is thrown face first against a wall and turns inside out, reversing him-
self completely. "This always raises a gasp from the audi- ence," Mr Hogue said. "We were not just mimicking reality, but also had to deal with humans in- teracting with our computer effects."
The growing enthusiasm for computer animation alarms some purists, who fear that pro- ducers will decide that their only guarantee of success is to opt for dazzling graphics, leaving less
tors manipulate a blank manne- quin of the android, then "stick" money for good scriptwriting. its features on afterwards far Mr Hogue sees this as an simpler than manipulating the full 3D image itself.
The animation team used "Make Sticky" for one of the most stunning scenes in the film, where T-1000 "drips" through the bars of a cell in the form of a
The other new technique is nology. called "Morph". Mr Hogue de- Schwarzenegger scribes this as "a 2D image- warping program tool", which
means it lets him turn one object into another in one continuous process. "Morph allows you to cross-dissolve one person into another, but also lets you pull
recently laughed off rumours that his multi-million-pound pay was supplemented with a private jet. Mr Hogue is equally cool on the subject of how much he earnt for his work on T2 "I did it more for the fame than the fortune."
Christian Hogue, London-based member of the 'T2' animation team
abiding problem for Hollywood: "If you spend a lot of money on films you want to know that they are going to be successful. Peo- ple will follow any fad, not just animation." The price of anima- tion is coming down, he adds, thanks to cheaper digital tech-
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