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Pioneering computer animation artist and educator Ed Kramer brought the creepy Scarabs from The Mummy and the threateningly funny Rock Monster from Galaxy Quest to life at the close of the 20th century, working as a Sequence Supervisor at George Lucas’s legendary visual effects house Industrial Light + Magic.
Now Kramer is interviewing some of the world’s original CGI artists on his new podcast, CGI Fridays. The podcast is a free offering from the science fiction fan app The Companion (www.thecompanion.app).
Kramer speaks with the little-known artists who made the magic that brought us into theaters in the golden era of CGI – when every new blockbuster made jaws drop, and made the audience wonder “How the heck did they do that?”
In the first episode, Kramer speaks with master sculptor Mark Siegel, who turned his experience at Clown College into a lifelong career at famed visual effects house Industrial Light + Magic. Siegel successfully made the jump from practical to digital modeling, sculpting everything from E.T. to the Pirates of the Caribbean pirate henchmen. He recalls designing and puppeteering Slimer from the original Ghostbusters, and goes on to talk about the job of a digital modeler and the work he did creating creatures and digital doubles for actors in Van Helsing, Indiana Jones, and Rango, among many other blockbuster visual effects films.
Episode 2 features CGI visionary Jeff Kleiser, the pioneering artist who was among the first in history to create a motion-captured human character. Kleiser built the companies and supervised visual effects for early CGI classic films like Tron, Stargate, Judge Dredd, and Son of the Mask. He created the transformation effects for the character Mystique in the X-Men franchise, and his team (including Kramer himself) also updated the iconic Columbia Pictures “Lady with a Torch” logo in 1994, the version which is still seen in theaters today. Kleiser and his longtime partner Diana Walczak were also among the first to create theme park “ride-film” attractions, including the Spiderman 3D ride, which is still in operation at Universal’s theme parks in Orlando and Japan.
In Episode 3, Kramer speaks with Frank Vitz, the software guru behind many of Jeff Kleiser’s feature film effects, including the water effects from Roland Emmerich’s 1994 blockbuster Stargate. Episode 4 features Henry LaBounta, the VFX Supervisor who worked closely with Steven Spielberg to create the CGI tornadoes for Twister, part the Red Sea for Prince of Egypt, and art direct the spider-bots that find Tom Cruise in Minority Report,
Episode 5 features “match moving” supervisor Alia Agha, one of the first women to be hired as a CGI artist, whose ability to create virtual cameras that exactly match real ones helped to add CGI seamlessly into movies like Galaxy Quest, Men in Black 2, Harry Potter, Iron Man and Pacific Rim – with a surprise guest appearance in one of cinema’s earliest CGI masterpieces! Episodes 6 and 7 feature a two-part talk with Adam Howard, a master painter from Melbourne, Australia, whose career in digital painting spans the entire history of CGI. Adam created iconic phaser effects for Star Trek – and he happened to be both the hand of Darth Vader and the handwriting of Bart Simpson!
CGI Fridays posts a new interview every other Friday at The Companion, the ultimate destination for science fiction fans. Subscribing to The Companion is like attending a new Comic-Con on your phone every day. The Companion covers classic TV shows like Stargate SG-1, Star Trek, and The X-Files, while also going in-depth and behind-the-scenes with the writers, show runners, actors and visual effects gurus behind Star Wars, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and all the current science fiction movies in theaters – and shows on streaming services – today.
Visit www.thecompanion.app for an overview of the full range of exclusive content and subscribe today! And enjoy CGI Fridays from Ed Kramer right now, absolutely free to download and listen on your favorite podcast app!
