Kansas City Star, Saturday, November 8, 1997
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What a Trooper!
Lee's Summit man's 20
seconds of 'Starship Troopers'
fame could lead to more Hollywood time
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To create a futuristic subway,
employees of Trinity Animation first
created a "wire frame" perspective
of the tunnel on a computer screen,
top left. That view was then given
an illusion of depth and mass by
adding light sources, shadows and
surfaces, bottom left. Finally the
computer-generated tunnel was
composited with real film footage of
the subway's exterior portal, which
was built on a movie set, right
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These may be the most important 20
seconds in Jim Lammers' career.
For audiences watching the new
science-fiction movie "Starship Troopers,"
the four special-effects shots Lammers
created for the film in his Lee's Summit
office may go unnoticed. After all, there
are no more than 500 "F/X" shots in the big
release about Earthlings battling giant
bugs, some of them truly spectacular.
But earlier this week, as he took his seat
at an advance screening of the movie,
Lammers was a very excited man. After a year
of off-and-on work representing 900
man-hours, the owner of Trinity Animation
and Visual Effects was about to see his
artistry on the big screen for the first
time. How would his efforts stack up against
the contributions of some of the biggest,
most powerful special effects firms in the
business?
Two hours and 10 minutes later, as the name
Trinity Animation scrolled up the screen
during the final credits, Lammers was still
happy. The shots he'd worked on didn't
draw attention to themselves. Instead, they
seemed so real that in some cases audience
members wouldn't recognize them as cinematic
sleight of hand.
"It looked good," a beaming Lammers
said. "And it's an exciting movie. Our stuff
was more compressed than I expected - it
went by really fast - but this was
definately a good experience."
His enthusiasm was echoed by Peter Kuran,
creator of the light sabers in "Star Wars."
Kuran's Los Angeles speciel-effects house
produced more than 100 shots for "Starship
Troopers," and Kuran farmed out some special
effects work to smaller animation shops,
including Lammers'.
"I gave him the job because he seemed to
have the right attitude," Kuran said of
Lammers. "Not just technical know-how but
integrity. And I think his work on 'Starship
Troopers' was just great."
The fact that Lammers' four shots ended up
in the final cut means he now has one foot
in Hollywood's door. He's that much closer
to recognizing his dream of creating
original entertainment-oriented computer
animation.
Lively and animated
Jim Lammers' right brain and left brain
get along just fine, than you very much.
"I was heavily into art at Center High,"
Lammers said, "and my art teacher was upset
to learn that I was going to college to
study electronics engineering." |
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But that's what he did, financing his years
at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
with scholarship money won in a poster
design contest.
For several years Lammers put his artistic
inclinations on hold and concentrated on
technical work. He worked at Rockwell
International in Los Angeles, developing a
space-based infared optical system for
President Reagan's Strategic Defense
Initiative. Lammers loved the work but not
the West Coast's cost of living. He returned
to the Kansas City area, built a home in
Lee's Summit, got married and went to work
selling and installing factory control
instruments and monitoring systems. He
played guitar in a rock band in his spare
time.
But about six years ago, he began dabbling
in computer animation, downloading programs
from the Internet. By today's standards the
software was primitive and slow, sometimes
taking an entire night to execute an order.
But Lammers was hooked.
"That's when I started thinking that this
was the wave of the future," he said.
He spent $10,000 on a high-tech video
recorder so that he could produce tapes of
his computer creations. For a year or so he
kept a day job while designing computer
graphics at night, which he then peddled at
local firms.
In '94 he took the plunge, quitting his job
and founding Trinity Animation.
Today the company occupies a three-room
suite in a Lee's Summit office park. In
addition to Lammers there is a full-time
secretary and a German college student who
landed a gig at Trinity as part of an
internship program.
Those expecting an awesome display of
technology in his offices will be
disappointed. The equipment Lammers uses
doesn't look much different than you basic
personal computer.
But working in these modest circumstances
and employing his artistic and technical
skills, Lammers has created some impressive
projects.
He's designed graphics for the Jumbotron at
Kauffman Stadium, created animated corporate
logos, built Web sites for companies and
contributed animated sequences to TV ads for
Rolox Windows. (The company has a Web site:
www.trinity3d.com)
"Being in Kansas City is tough," Lammers
said. "The sales skills I learned in my
earlier jobs cam in handy. I didn't wait for
people to come to me. I had to be a
self-promoter.
Some of his best work can be found in
"virtual reality" programs he's designed
that allow potential customers and investors
to walk through environments that don't yet
exist.
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For Butler Heavy Structures, for instance,
Lammers has created computer models of
proposed buildings, such as an airplane
hangar and a large studio sound stage.
One such "previsualization" is of a proposed
basketball field house for the University of
Southern Alabama. The viewer seems to float
effortlessly around the interior of the huge
structure. Look up and you can see the
girders holding up the roof. Zoom down to
floor level and you can see the reflections
of the animated players practicing on the
lacquered hardwood court. It's very
convincing.
Lammers also has developed previsualizations
of Marion Park, the industrial development
planned by Hoechst Marion Roussel, and a
program that allows McDonald's franchise
holders to design their own restaurant
interiors.
"It allows them to fool around with color,
wallpaper, tile, floor covering, wall art -
the variations are endless," Lammers said.
For Greg Norman Golf Design, Lammers is
developing software that allows potential
customers to "play" through as many as 300
holes. The results are strikingly detailed,
right down to the checkerboard mowing
pattern in the greens.
He's also found time to co-write "3D Studio
4 Beginners," an unofficial instruction
manual for the popular "3D Studio" animation
software. So far the book has been
translated into several languages, including
Russian, Hungarian, and Chinese.
And besides doing computer animation,
Trinity is a worlwide distributor of 3-D
animation software.
Crossover dreams
Lammers said what he really wants to do
is direct. That's why "Starship Troopers" is
so important to him.
"If you can deliver on something like this,
the doors open," Lammers said. "There are
lots of people out there who want to be in
the business but don't have what it takes,
so the industry tends to be wary of new
faces."
So far as Lammers is concerned, his 20
seconds of "Starship Troopers" is only the
beginning.
"I want to do original work, maybe an
animated series on cable TV. That's the
goal."
Speaking from Los Angeles, Peter Kuran said
Lammers' dream is doable: "I don't think is
makes a lot of difference anymore how far
away you are from California and Hollywood.
A lot of people around the country have the
ability and the equipment to do
sophisticated computer animation. From now
on, you're going to see a lot more of this." |
The on-screen scenes
Four scenes; 20 seconds of film. Here is a
rundown of Jim Lammers' work on "Starship
Troopers":
The exploding hill.
Lammers was provided with several seconds of
film in which a trooper in the foreground
fires his weapon at a distant ridge, which
explodes in a cloud of dust and flying dirt
clods.
His assignment: to make it look as if the
explosion was a mini-nuclear detonation.
To accomplish this, Lammers and his
then-employee Harley Higgins added several
layers of additional elements to the
original shot. The combined a fireball,
expanding smoke rings and a brilliant flash
of light suggesting an atomic blast.
The subway
A young woman boards a futuristic subway,
which speeds off down a tunnel and out of
sight.
Lammers received footage of several actors
standing in a |
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tiny set of the subways interior. But the
tunnel and the exterior of the subway car -
including the door that closes in front of
the woman - were created in the computer.
The wall
Starship troopers race into a large chamber
aboard a huge spacecraft. Once inside, a
door slides shut, sealing them off from the
outer hallway.
Lammers received footage of the troopers
running through the open door and taking
their positions in their muster room. But
there was nothing outside the door - just a
green screen. Lammers had to create the wall
of the outer hallway in the computer
The commercial
This was a film-within-a-film, a commercial
for a psychic being shown on the television
of the future. The faux ad features the
"psychic" staring at the camera adn suddenly
developing a third eye in the middle of his
forehead.
Lammers was given footage of the psychic.
The third eye exists only in the computer. |
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