Artist Spotlight - Hal Hickel

Among the numbers of visual effects companies in the world, Industrial Light & Magic was the first. Founded by George Lucas in 1975, they have captivated audiences world-wide with their groundbreaking innovations in the art of visual effects with such classics as STAR WARS and JURASSIC PARK, among many. Over the company's 40 years in the industry, a large number of talented artists and technicians have been brought on board to bring some of the most breathtaking images to life. One of those individuals is animation supervisor Hal Hickel, who joined the company in 1996 to work on THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK and hasn't left since.

AM: I think many people would wonder what is an animation supervisor? What are your roles and responsibilities as an animation supervisor?

Hal Hickel: As the Animation Supervisor, I partner with the Visual Effects Supervisor, and together we form the creative leadership for a given project. While the Visual Effects Supervisor oversees the entire project, I focus on the creation, and animation of anything that has to move. Usually that's creatures or characters, but it can also include vehicles (cars, planes, trains, etc). I give input on modeling, textures, rigging, and finally on animation.In pre-production, I meet with the director of the film to learn what they want to achieve. During principal photography I'm on set so that I can give advice when scenes are being shot that we are later going to add CG characters to. During post-production I direct my team of animators, giving them feedback in dailies on their work, and then presenting it to the director for their feedback, and approval.

AM: What first attracted you to animation, was there a particular film or animator?

Hal Hickel: I saw the original, (1933 version) King Kong on television when I was 6 or 7, and it got me really interested in stop motion animation. That was in the early '70s. Then in 1977 I saw Star Wars, and that broadened my interest into all areas of visual effects.

AM: What was your education and training?

Hal Hickel: I went attended the Film Graphics (experimental animation) program at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal-Arts).

AM: What was your experience like at Cal-Arts?

Hal Hickel: I really loved it there. They have terrific programs in fine arts, dance, drama, music, and film, so I was surrounded by creative people doing interesting things.

AM: Can talk about your first job in the industry and how it lead to the next job?

Hal Hickel: My first job in the industry was at a small company in Portland Oregon called An-Fx. They did motion graphics for local advertising. We had an Oxberry Animation Stand, which was a sort of camera rig that was common in those days for doing that kind of work. The Oxberry had a table for graphic artwork, or animation cels, and mounted above it on rails was a camera that could travel up and down the rails (zooming in/out on the artwork). The table was motorized to move north/south, and east/west and to rotate. This type of camera was used to shoot animation, but also for creating back-lit motion graphics including "slit-scan" and "streak" effects (like the 'Stargate' sequence in 2001), which was something I was particularly interested in at the time.

When I first started working (1983), the visual effects industry was much smaller, and mostly concentrated in the United States. While all the studios I really wanted to work for were concentrated in California, initially I found work at a small title and motion graphics studio in my hometown or Portland Oregon.

Later I was hired at Will Vinton Studios (also in Portland), doing stop motion animation. Long after I left, Will Vinton Studios became Laika, famous for CORALINE, BOXTROLLS, PARANORMAN, and KUBO AND THE TWO STRINGS. Back then, Will Vinton Studios was doing clay animation for TV commercials, and animated TV specials.

AM: How was it working at Will Vinton Studios?

Hal Hickel: Will Vintons was great. It was a small studio and somewhat isolated from the rest of the movie and visual effects industry. So it had it's own quirky way of solving stop motion problems. I always liked that. I learned a lot there, and made some very good friends. Something else I liked about working there, is that I got to do a lot of different things. Making sets, molding clay characters, building armatures, running motion control camera rigs, doing 2D FX animation. Really fun.

I left Vintons in 1994 and was hired at Pixar as an animator on TOY STORY.

AM: Did you plan to always be a stop motion animator or were there bigger ambitions that you had?

Hal Hickel: I always wanted to work in visual effects for live action movies. At first I wanted to do the Ray Harryhausen thing, and create creatures for live action films using stop motion. After STAR WARS came out, I really wanted to work at ILM. I got really interested in FX animation, and back-lit graphics (this was when I was at Cal-Arts), so I pursued that for awhile. Then at Will Vintons, I got back into Stop Motion, but I also learned a lot about motion control camera rigs, and so I thought maybe I might be able to do either of those things at ILM some day. After Jurassic Park, it was clear that stop motion wasn't going to be used for realistic creatures anymore, so I got interested in CG animation. Then I got super lucky landing a position at Pixar. From then on, I focused on character animation (rather than FX animation, or motion control).

AM: What were your thoughts about the digital revolution?

Hal Hickel: I had been keeping my eye on CG all through the 1980s. From '83-'87 I worked at An-Fx doing motion graphics, and that kind of work was one of the first things to be revolutionized by computer graphics. By the end of the 80's, the sort of "photo-optical" version of that work (like we had been doing at An-Fx) was already history.

However, by that time, I was at Will Vintons doing stop motion, and it seemed like a safe bet that technique would continue to be used for creating creatures for some time to come. Of course that turned out not to be true, and JURASSIC PARK was the film that made that clear.

At the time JURASSIC PARK came out, Vintons was working on a test for a film called "DINOSAUR" (later made by Disney using CG). The test involved a large swamp set with some stegosaurus munching on weeds, etc. It was really just a proof of concept piece to try and land the project.

For weeks we'd been looking at the trailers for Jurassic, and speculating about what parts were the Stan Winston animatronics, and what parts might be CG. None of us really knew anything about CG, or what it was capable of doing at that time. We didn't think it was really capable of producing a featured living breathing animal, close to camera, but might be suitable for background creatures.

I went out to see the movie at mid-day on it's opening Friday, by myself. I was absolutely shocked. I went back to work, walked up to the folks working on the Dinosaur test and said something like "Just put down your tools, stop working, go see JURASSIC PARK. Whatever you thought was possible... well you just have no idea".

So it pretty profoundly changed what I thought my future career was going to be. I didn't know anything about CG, or even how to begin learning about it.

AM: How was the transition from animating with stop motion to animating with the computer? Or did you have experience with it before?

Hal Hickel: After seeing my future seemingly vanish when JURASSIC PARK came out, I started looking into CG. Reading making of articles, etc. Also Vintons was connected with a local company that made (actually still makes) an inexpensive CG animation software called "Animation Master". So we got some PCs and some copies of the software and started messing around with it.

We also hired a guy named Mathew Brunner, who became our "CG guy", and we bought one Silicon Graphics workstation and one license of Alias (which later became Maya). I would come in at night and fool around with it, learning very basic things. Also, one of the things I did at Vintons was run the motion control camera rigs. These are essentially robotic camera movers that are controlled by a computer. There are similarities between that work, and animating characters in CG (though I didn't know it at the time).

I thought all the people doing high-end CG animation (at ILM, or wherever), were people with Computer Science degrees, walking around wearing lab coats. So I didn't see a path to getting there. I thought I would have to go back to college and get a computer science degree, and that didn't seem very realistic at the time.

The reality was, the folks building the software, writing the code, were indeed computer science wizards (minus the lab coats), but the people animating the characters were mainly just... animators. Either from 2D (drawn), or Stop Motion backgrounds.

AM: Another milestone in computer animation that you mentioned earlier was TOY STORY. How did you land that project?

Hal Hickel: I got a lucky break. Pixar was running behind getting TOY STORY done, and they needed more animators. Someone at Vintons got a call from a friend down there, and she didn't want to make the jump to CG, but she knew I was interested. I sent down a demo reel (all stop motion work), and got hired. They didn't care if you knew anything about animating in the computer, they just cared if you knew how to bring characters to life.

Once I started animating in the computer at Pixar, I realized that I liked it, and it worked well with my brain (though I still miss puppets, and cameras, etc).

So this big scary thing (CG), that seemed like it was destroying my career, turned out to be a great thing for me.

AM: After TOY STORY, you went to ILM and are now with the pioneers of modern visual effects. Were you excited that your dream was coming true and that you were going to be working on these big projects?

Hal Hickel: Not at all. Kidding, of course yes! I mean, it was amazing to finally realize my childhood dream of working there, and to get to work alongside someone like Dennis Muren, who I had read about all these years. Eventually though you have to sort of put aside your amazement, so you can get down to the work. That said, after 20 years here, I still feel amazed.

AM: You mention about your responsibilities were partnering with the visual effects supervisor and form the creative leadership of the project. How much creative control are you often given by a director? Can you discuss about the collaboration with the director as well?

Hal Hickel: It really depends on the project. If the director has a strong vision, but really just wants you to execute that vision, without bringing any of your own ideas to the table, that can be boring. On the other hand, if the director is super collaborative, and is asking for everyone's opinion, but mainly just because they don't have an opinion of their own... that's not good either.

The best experiences I've had have been with directors who are very collaborative, but at the same time have a strong vision of the film. I think I've been super lucky to work with great directors. If I think about it, It's a tremendous list: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Lawrence Kasdan, Gore Verbinski, Jon Favreau, Guillermo Del Toro, JJ Abrams, Duncan Jones, Gareth Edwards.

AM: Gore Verbinski was definitely on my mind when I thought of interviewing you. He's a director that comes to mind who seems to allow a lot of creativity. How was it working with him on a number of films?

Hal Hickel: Gore is a great example of what I was talking about before. He has a very strong vision of what he's after, but he not only encourages you to contribute ideas, he demands it. He's also just very funny.

AM: The work ILM did on Pirates 2 was stunning, especially the work on Davy Jones and the innovation of iMoCap. Could talk about the work that went into that film?

Hal Hickel: Pirates 2 was an extremely challenging project. We had Davy Jones (and his crew), which had to be CG characters, in closeup, alongside the live action characters. Davy's tentacle beard was a huge challenge, as well as just the number of shots (plus the Kraken), etc. We were inventing new mocap technology, new technology for the tentacle beard, and pushing all our artistry higher as well. Really tough and scary project. The best kind.

AM: How did it feel to be at the Dolby Theater and win the Academy Award?

Hal Hickel: That was just really great and exciting. Pretty much just as you would imagine it. A fantastic night. We went to the Vanity Fair party afterwards, which was amazing and fun.

AM: Taking a break from live action, what was the experience of working on RANGO like since this was Gore's and ILM's first animated film?

Hal Hickel: RANGO was terrific and a real high point for me. I had left Pixar because ultimately I wanted to do the "Ray Harryhausen" thing more than the "Walt Disney" thing, but at the point RANGO came along, I was happy to take a break from making creatures for live action films, and dive back into feature animation for a bit.

It was great to work with Gore again, and to work on something that was quite different from any other animated films out there. It still stands out as a really unique film. I hope we get to do another one, especially with Gore.

AM: Guillermo Del Toro is definitely a fan favorite and I would think that working on a Guillermo Del Toro monster movie would be a lot of fun. What was it like working with him on PACIFIC RIM and creating the Kaiju?

Hal Hickel: Guillermo is amazing and a lot of fun. His enthusiasm for monsters is so infectious. One of the things that I love about Guillermo is his love for, and knowledge of animation. He speaks the animator's language, so it's very easy to understand where he's coming from when he gives notes on the work.

AM: I'm curious to know is there a difference working on a project where it's just an in-house vfx supervisor in charge of the project as apposed to something like WARCRAFT where Jeff White was the in-house supervisor yet Bill Westenhofer was the film's oversaw everything?

Hal Hickel: Well, the downside with something like that, is if the client-side supe tries to control the flow of information to the director, tries to act as a "gate keeper". Fortunately, I've not had that experience. Bill was great on WARCRAFT, and John Nelson was great on IRON MAN, so I've been lucky in that regard. When it's done right, and the personalities are a good fit, it's fine.

AM: Are there any particular projects that you're most found of and possibly not found of?

Hal Hickel: PIRATES 2, RANGO, PACIFIC RIM, IRON MAN, WARCRAFT, all great experiences. I can add ROGUE ONE to that list now. ROGUE now ranks right up there at the top with these other films. AI: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is also very special to me because it was my first project as Animation Supervisor, and it was a Spielberg/Kubrick project.

The films I've had the worst time on are films that I was brought onto to help out. It's nothing against those projects or their directors, it's just hard coming into the project mid-stream.

AM: Do you prefer working on the big elaborate projects or do you prefer working on the smaller projects?

Hal Hickel: Both really. I'd be very happy working on a small film where maybe there's just one CG character that has an important role. I'm also happy on a film like WARCRAFT which has tons of CG characters.

AM: After all your years in the industry, how has it changed since you first started?

Hal Hickel: The job of the animator has largely remained unchanged. Be a good observer. Plan your shot. Animate. The actual process of animating in the computer is amazingly similar to what it was 20 years ago. Set keys, adjust splines, rinse and repeat.

That said, we use a lot more motion capture now, which on the one hand takes some of the creative choices away from the animator, but on the other can give you the opportunity to partner with a great actor in creating a character. Examples of this are Bill Nighy as Davy Jones, and more recently Alan Tudyk as K2SO.

AM: The visual effects business is an ever growing field, what would your advice be for new generations of visual effects artists?

Hal Hickel: It's the main advice I always give: Don't wait to be invited. In other words, don't wait for the perfect conditions to get started. Some people will say: "when I can afford that camera I want, then I'll make a film", I say - "In the meantime use your iPhone". Someone will say "I can't make my film until I can afford Maya", I say "get Blender, and get started". Etc, you get the idea.

AM: Thank you Hal for taking the time to do this and can't wait to see what ILM has in store.

Hal Hickel: Thanks Andy, no problem!

To see Hal Hickel's full credits, click the link below. Once again, I would like to thank Hal so much for making this possible and am glad that he is our first artist spotlight. Until next time, stay cool and creative.