KU grad develops animation processes for DreamWorks
Lawrence native Lance Williams has worked on such films as "The Prince of Egypt," "Habitat" and "Lawnmower Man."
Lance Williams' career is based on the subtleties of life: shadows, hues, reflections, slight motions.
As a software developer for DreamWorks Animation, the Kansas University alumnus and Lawrence native must pay attention to the consistency of colors from one frame to the next, the light and darkness of shadows and the blurring associated with a character's movement in the studio's animated films.
"We're trying to develop programs to give more power to animators' drawings," he said during a recent phone interview. "The shading and other effects when done by hand would be too laborious or not continuous from frame to frame. The shading shimmers or the color boils. The process to shade and texture and render animated forms is more visually interesting and continuous now."
Williams' most recent project to hit the silver screen is "The Prince of Egypt," the animated story of Moses that features the voices of Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Sandra Bullock, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum, Steve Martin, Helen Mirren, Michelle Pfeiffer, Martin Short and Patrick Stewart.
Williams served as one of two senior software developers for the project and was part of a team whose task was to help develop a process to blur the characters' movement so they would resemble those in live-action films.
"Animated drawings are usually unnaturally crisp," he said, recalling the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park" as an example. "(The blurring of movement) is a small thing and it's not very noticeable, but it's a big difference to designers."
More than 350 artists, animators and technicians from more than 35 countries devoted four years to creating "The Prince of Egypt." Williams described the credit list at the end of the film as "daunting."
Williams, who graduated from Lawrence High School in 1967 and returns to town to visit his mother, Jan Williams, majored in English and minored in Asian studies at KU. After his graduation in 1971, he became involved in a grant program at KU designed to teach computer skills to researchers in the humanities field, and became hooked on computers.
"They were just starting to see computers as a valuable tool (to researchers)," he said.
Williams was hired by KU's Space Technology Center and worked on a project to develop computer graphics. He then enrolled in graduate school at the University of Utah and joined other university students and faculty in pioneering visual graphics for space training simulators.
"It was the beginning of virtual reality," he said.
Over the years, Williams experimented with computer-image films at New York Institute of Technology, served as a consultant for the late puppeteer Jim Henson, worked for a television network in Brazil and served as a consultant for U.S. Air Force-related weather forecasters in Boulder, Colo.
Eventually, he was hired as a research scientist by Apple and helped develop Quick Time VR, a real-time panoramic display.
"I was there for seven years and then I went to Canada to do special effects on a science-fiction movie," he said.
The film was "Habitat," a tale about a scientist who disregards the rules of his laboratory, swipes some biological materials and uses them to build the house he hopes can save humanity. In the end, he becomes a mutant while the house turns into a living, unfriendly organism.
"It was awful fun but it was not a good movie," he said. "I was getting my feet wet."
Williams worked next on "Lawnmower Man" and a Japanese science-fiction movie, "Lensman." Then three years ago, he was hired by DreamWorks.
Williams has already completed work on another film for the studio -- "El Dorado," which stars Kevin Kline, Rosie Perez, Edward James Olmos and Kenneth Branagh and will be released in the spring of 2000.
"It's a buddy movie, an adventure-comedy. It's set in the time of the evasion of the Americas by Cortez," he said.
His current project is "Spirit," a western told from a horse's point of view. Casting has not been done.
"It's a wide-screen project so there will be wonderful stuff with landscapes," he said. "It's still in development."
The prospect of getting to work with animated films is what originally attracted Williams to computer graphics. And now that he is there he must keep on his toes to remain on the cutting edge.
"Right now, it's boom times for animation. Most guys can write their own tickets," he said, adding there is a demand for those who can create hand-drawn images as well as computer-generated ones.
"Animation is an unlimited art form. In the future, animation will be able to do everything that's in a live-action film and more."
-- Jan Biles' phone message number is 832-7146. Her e-mail address is jbiles@ljworld.com.
