Jurassic Park, released in 1993, ended the reign of stop-motion animation in Hollywood moviemaking, with the famous scenes of the T-Rex running, breaking logs, pulling a man off a toilet seat, and causing other kinds of mayhem created using computer-generated animation (CGI).

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The animator Steve “Spaz” Williams, trained in classic, Disney-style 2D animation, was sure he could do better with the then relatively new 3D animation software, and worked somewhat secretly on getting natural, smooth movement that would surpass the artificial jerkiness and other flaws in the stop-motion methods that the studio had already approved and was working on in the making of Jurassic Park. He proved himself right, and CG animation took over not only Jurassic Park, but nearly everything to come in the future of 3D animation.

Last year, the Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences started a series on YouTube called, “Moments that changed the Movies” on their Academy Originals channel. Their first documentary was a behind-the-scenes on how Jurassic Park changed movie making through the use of computer-generated animation (CG) to create the effects.

I had the opportunity to talk with Spaz, and with the release of Jurassic World this weekend it seemed like the perfect time to offer this interview, with some insight into how, starting from a background in 2D animation, he was able to get the studio (and, in effect, the industry) to move to 3D CGI animation nearly overnight.

 

 

Here’s the Academy Originals documentary Moments that changed the Movies: Jurassic Park that prompted my interview:

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