Stewart Dickson
60 Chestnut Court
Champaign, IL  61822 USA
+1(217)607-1024

mathart(a)emsh.calarts.edu

Filmography

Eno et Duchamp: A Delay in Celluloid (1983) 16mm animated pencil test. Work-in-progress. Currently translating from FORTRAN/GRAFPAK to Stereo-3D in C++/Open Inventor/VRML/Maya.

Animation of Marcel Duchamp's 'Large Glass' with soundtrack by Brian Eno. Reference: 'The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even' (c) Marcel Duchamp, George Heard Hamilton, Richard Hamilton Edition Hansjoerg Mayer, Stuttgart, 1976.

The original pencil test was recorded on black-and-white-positive high-contrast film using an Information International, Inc. (III) FR-80/Comp-80 vector-graphics film printer with a 16mm cine camera head at AT&T Bell Laboratory, Holmdel, NJ. This was the same type of film printer which was used to record the digital sequences for "TRON".

Find more videos like this on ACM SIGGRAPH Digital Arts Community

Tranquil Pool (1983) 16mm film computed in FORTRAN on an IBM 360 mainframe, output on an Information International, Inc. Fr-80/Comp80 vector film printer. Optical printing by Andy Johnson, Columbia College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ghost (1990) Film Printing by Stewart Dickson, Bill Villarreal, digital visual effects by The Post Group and Pacific Title & Art Studio.

Most of the scenes in the ending sequence, in which Patrick Swayze is surrounded by white glows were edited in CCIR-601 (D-1) 4-2-2 digital video and were transferred back to theatrical film using the Gemini Process.

Dozo: Don't Touch Me; Jeff Kleiser/Diana Walczak, SIGGRAPH 1990. Film Printing by Stewart Dickson, Bill Villarreal, The Post Group and Pacific Title & Art Studio.

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

All of the visual effects for Brett Leonard's The Lawnmower Man were done at video resolution and went through The Post Group and Pacific Title & Art Studio's Gemini Process -- a patented digital video-to-35mm theatrical film transfer process with image processing for improved subjective image quality. This process was invented by Bill Villarreal and Stewart Dickson, (Stephen R. "Bruno" George -- uncredited) and the patent was assigned to The Post Group.

Simultaneously, Stewart Dickson had been doing digital sculpture with the help of Brian Vandellyn Park in the Marketing Department of DTM Corporation in Austin, TX. Brian Park was the inventor of the Flogiston Chair, which was used in the scenes of The Lawnmower Man where "Jobe" (Jeff Fahey) is learning at an accelerated rate in Virtual Reality.

Brian put set dresser Jacqui Masson in touch with me. The production company, BenJade Films, rented four of my sculptures to use in the set for "Sebatsian Timms' office".

Warlock II: The Armageddon (1993) Digital Effects and Film Printing.

At The Post Group I developed interfaces between the Cyberware Laboratory 3D scanning laser digitizer, Wavefront Technologies' Advanced Visualizer and various digital video effects boxes such as the Quantel Mirage and the Sony System-G.

The telekinetically flying dagger in the final scene of Warlock II: The Armageddon came from a Cyberware scan. The digital visual effects for that scene were edited in CCIR-601 (D-1) 4-2-2 digital video, mixed in the Abekas A-84 D-1 digital switcher and the dagger element (and several other objects) were animated and rendered in the Sony System G.

Dinosaur (2000) © Disney, used by permission

From 1996 to 1997, I worked on the Production Software crew for Dinosaur at Walt Disney Feature Animation. I developed a NURBS seam detection and orgaqnization algorithm, a NURBS Stitcher user interface and pipeline elements which became integral to the Muscle & Skin system for the 3-D digital animation character rigs which were used in Dinosaur.

From 1997 to 1999, I worked as an animation Technical Director on the Character Finaling crew for Dinosaur. Character Finaling was the phase in which final animation, done on a light-weight, low-resolution stand-in model in the rough and cleanup animation phases, was first applied to the full-resolution, muscle-skin and furred models with secondary animation applied, such as muscle-bulge and jiggle, skin-stretch, character-to-character and character-to-set interactions. This phase was not done in real-time interactively, and was heavily script-driven. As this was the first look at the full-resolution models with textures (but rough lighting and background compositing), the Character Finaling artists were frequently required to tweak animation and the models to make the characters work in the scene.

I pushed a total of about 250 shots through the Character Finaling pipeline. In 2002, I obtained permission from the Walt Disney Company to present this work to Convegno ` Matematica e Cultura' in Venice, Italy. The slide presentation is posted here.

Mickey's Philharmagic (2003) Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom.

The theater for Mickey's Philharmagic has four 70-mm projectors pointing at a 140-foot, curved panoramic screen. The screen real estate is divided into a 70-foot-wide, stereoscopic (two-projectors) central screen and two (left and right) monoptic peripheral screens (projectors). The three screens/image tiles edge-match to a precision of less than 1/2 pixel (1 inch on the screen). The virtual 3D scene in Maya registers geometrically with the physical theater to provide a visually correct stereoscopic view.

I designed and implemented the four-camera, stereo rig in Maya that was used throughout the production. I designed and supervised the tests which ran through the production pipeline to ensure that image sequences rendered in Maya landed at the correct point on the screen after digital printing to four parallel strips of 70-mm film.

Press Here to go to Mathart.org home page.