victoro@SDCSVAX.ARPA (06/02/85)
From: crash!victoro@SDCSVAX.ARPA On the question of the techniques used to animate Vermithrax Pejorative. >From _Cinefex_6_ page 33 ...(Since ILM would be handeling effects for both _Dragonslayer_ and _Raiders_of_the_Lost_Ark simultaneously, the facility was devided into two units. Dennis Muren, Phil Tibbett and Ken Ralston became the key dragon efects people, while Richard Edlund and another crew worked primarly on _Raiders_. Bruce Nicholson of the optical department, Sam Comstock of animation, and a few others would devide their time between shows.) >From page 37 The script described a beast forty feet long with a ninety-foot wingspan. That made for some heafty props: a sixteen-foot head and neck; a twenty-foot tail; an arm-and-wing; and a huge claw. >From page 38 [Referring to baby dragons] "We had one," Barwood recalled, "that looked like an eagle chick - tiny little flappy wings. You couldn't even use it on Saturday morning television it was so cute." The flying dragon was done using Go-motion and a motion controlled moving around a standard articulated dragon model. On the other model, the one providing the walking shots, I refer to: Page 42 The entire six-unit complex rode on a motion controlled cart which had eight feet of travel on a track. Of nineteen stop-motion motors included on the rig, sixteen could be under motion control at one time. In use, the dragon was perched above this contraption, connected to each of the units by rods and, in effect, riding along in midair. The term Go-Motion was created to describe the new process of introducing blurred movement to the stop motion animation. Victor O'Rear-- {ihnp4, cbosgd, sdcsvax, noscvax}!crash!victoro crash!victoro@nosc or crash!victoro@ucsd