The Evolution of Computer Generated Images and Special Effects Design in the Jurassic Park Trilogy

Based on Michael Crichton’s unpublished novel, The Andromeda Strain, the awe-inspiring Jurassic Park trilogy (1993-2001) emerged from Steven Spielburg’s determination to make extinct characters come to life again. Early on in their careers, Crichton and Spielburg met at Universal Studios while working on Duel (1971) with ambitions to direct a film that would completely immerse their audience into a dinosaur-encompassing world. About five years later, Spielberg attempted to form a digital rendering for his film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but later concluded that “‘The technology wasn’t there yet\u27” (Mottram 20). Fast-forward to 1990, Spielburg was fixated on seeing real-looking dinosaurs on screen; prompting him to contact Phil Tippett, “the stop-motion animator famed for bringing to life numerous creatures from George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy” (Mottram 21) and special makeup effects expert, Stan Winston, “Hollywood’s leading expert in prosthetics, makeup, and creature effects. . .” (Mottram 22). Eager to win this position to work with Spielburg, Winston called in Mark “Crash” McCreely to create concept art for Jurassic Park (1993). Despite the work of the Tippett and Winston Studios, Steve “Spaz” Williams and Mark Dippé at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) “had been refusing to take no for an answer. . . [and] were convinced that they had the capabilities to build a realistic digital dinosaur, and they set out to do just that” (Mottram 48). Among this race to create the most realistic dinosaurs from scratch, Tippett’s stop-motion production was dropped for ILM’s photorealistic digital rendering. Throughout the eight years of filming the Jurassic Park trilogy, both the special effects designs and computer-generated imagery became exponentially more convincing by the end of each film. The gradual transition from using mostly animatronics in Jurassic Park (1993) to intermixing scenes with CGI by the end of Jurassic Park III (2001), allowed time for the software to upgrade and become malleable to the needs of the directors and producers. Production designer, Rick Carter, also had an influence on the utilization of foreground and background film plates to recreate more difficult long shot (LS) scenes with CGI dinosaurs and real actors in the frame. To answer the question: “How has the evolution of Computer Generated Images (CGI) and Special Effects (SPFX) shaped the immersive reality of production design in the Jurassic Park trilogy? A historical analysis of the evolution of CGI and SPFX are provided alongside a ¼” model rendition of the scene in the first film, where a Brachiosaurus is grazing on exceedingly tall trees in front of the characters, Dr. Alan Grant, Dr, Ellie Sattler, and John Hammond. This scene reveals the early stages of combining SPFX and CGI when the software was still brand new. In comparison to its later films, ILM’s technology set forth techniques that would impact the future of special effects in film

Efficient white LEDs using liquid-state magic-sized CdSe quantum dots

Magic clusters have attracted significant interest to explore the dynamics of quantum dot (QD) nucleation and growth. At the same time, CdSe magic-sized QDs reveal broadband emission in the visible wavelength region, which advantageously offer simple integration of a single-type of nanomaterial and high color rendering ability for white light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Here, we optimized the quantum yield of magic-sized CdSe QDs up to 22% via controlling the synthesis parameters without any shelling or post-treatment process and integrated them in liquid-state on blue LED to prevent the efficiency drop due to host-material effect. The fabricated white LEDs showed colorrendering index and luminous efficiency up to 89 and 11.7 lm/W, respectively

Superar el límite de la pantalla:el futuro integrado del diseño industrial e innovación de la interfaz

Tesis inédita de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Bellas Artes, leída el 27-11-2019The goals of this thesis are to streamline the design process of CDDs for both theirhardware and software, simplify the process of their conception, creation andproduction, motivate the design and interactive innovations for the next generationof CDDs.Starting with the process of investigating the design history of CDDs, we noticed theincreasing bi-directional influence between the graphical interface design and theindustrial design of these products. We started to work on the hypothesis:“A connection point between classical industrial design theories and moderninnovations in the world of interface design can be found, and the future of CDDrequires a universal design system for both its hardware and software.”In order to put our hypothesis into practice, it is important to clarify the generic andspecific objectives...El fin de esta tesis es mejorar el proceso de diseño de DDC tanto para su hardware como para su software, simplificar el proceso de concepción, creación y producción,así como motivar el diseño y las innovaciones interactivas para la próxima generación de DDC. Comenzando con un proceso de investigación que respete la historia del diseño de los DDC, notamos un incremento en la influencia bidireccional entre el diseño de interfaz gráfica y el diseño industrial de estos productos. Trabajamos sobre esta hipótesis: “Se puede encontrar un punto de conexión entre las teorías clásicas de diseño industrial y las innovaciones modernas en el mundo del diseño de interfaz. El futuro de los DDC requiere un sistema de diseño unificado para ambos: hardware y software.”Para poner nuestra hipótesis en práctica, es importante aclarar los objetivos genéricos y específicos...Fac. de Bellas ArtesTRUEunpu

The Devil's Colors: A Comparative Study of French and Nigerian Folktales

This study, largely based on five separate published collections, compares French and Nigerian folktales - focusing mainly on French Dauphine and Nigerian Igboland - to consider the role color plays in encounters with supernatural characters from diverse color background. A study in black, white/red and green, the paper compares the naming of colors in the two languages and illustrates their usage as a tool to communicate color-coded values. Nigeria's history, religious beliefs, and language development offer additional clues to what at first appears to be fundamental differences in cultural approach. Attempting to trace the roots of this color-coding, the study also considers the impact of colonization on oral literature and traditional art forms

Obvious: a meta-toolkit to encapsulate information visualization toolkits. One toolkit to bind them all

This article describes “Obvious”: a meta-toolkit that abstracts and encapsulates information visualization toolkits implemented in the Java language. It intends to unify their use and postpone the choice of which concrete toolkit(s) to use later-on in the development of visual analytics applications. We also report on the lessons we have learned when wrapping popular toolkits with Obvious, namely Prefuse, the InfoVis Toolkit, partly Improvise, JUNG and other data management libraries. We show several examples on the uses of Obvious, how the different toolkits can be combined, for instance sharing their data models. We also show how Weka and RapidMiner, two popular machine-learning toolkits, have been wrapped with Obvious and can be used directly with all the other wrapped toolkits. We expect Obvious to start a co-evolution process: Obvious is meant to evolve when more components of Information Visualization systems will become consensual. It is also designed to help information visualization systems adhere to the best practices to provide a higher level of interoperability and leverage the domain of visual analytics