Movies and TV shows make everything possible. Everything the director imagines can be done using technology and some old tricks from the movie industry. But who is the one responsible for turning the director’s fantasies into reality? Well, they are the special effects artists. Special effects artists are the people who are among the most important ones if we want to see a situation in which a dinosaur needs to make an appearance. But how do they do what they do and what kinds of such artists are there?
Computer animation
Computer animation artists are most likely the ones who are the most wanted by studios and the most credited, especially in Hollywood. For every movie or TV show, there has to be a team of highly qualified artists. Every artist does part of the job and is perfectly aware of what needs to be done.
Even though these teams consist of highly specialized professionals, computer animation can be a very painful and long process. Many mathematical algorithms have to be used for animating a person’s hair movement and don’t get me started on the dinosaur. Nowadays for these types of animations, a motion capture program is used. This program captures the movement of a man using a special suit and then digitizing it. This movement can be later transferred onto an SGI character. This makes animation a bit easier.
Pyrotechnics
Pyrotechnics artists are a crucial part of the crew. Even though computer animation artists do a lot of work when you need to make a dinosaur run through a forest, when you need an explosion, you call pyrotechnics artists. Explosions can be made with computer animation, but then it doesn’t have to look like a real thing. With this level of technology, most of SGI explosions can be recognized by the audience, making the movie look fake. Therefore, real explosions are used for firming the movie’s grasp to reality. Even a movie, such as Transformers, that uses SGI robots, uses real explosions so that the robots appear real.
Animatronics
Finally, we have animatronics artists. Their role may not be as important nowadays as it was before the development of computer animation, but they still have their place in the special effects industry. If you need someone to make an animatronic head of an animal, you should call these guys. They can make any fantasy creature seam real. Since we started with dinosaurs, the animatronics artists made all the dinosaurs’ heads in the Jurassic Park movies. The movies looked great and they saved some time for the computer animation crew. Once irreplaceable, nowadays animatronics artists are only called when you need to give your fantasy or sci-fi movie a more realistic look.