Scott Squires' prize winning scenes are part of the movie "Dragonheart": A computer generated dragon interacts with a human actor. The images integrate well with the natural backgrounds and human actors, and the motion appears smooth and realistic.

When I came on board to supervise the effects for "Dragonheart" in May of 1994, director Rob Cohen and the ILM production team were already developing storyboards and a dragon model was being designed by Phil Tippet. Our task was to create a major film actor in the form of "Draco", a mythical dragon. This meant bringing to life one of the most complex CG characters ever seen on film. We knew that the audience wouldn't easily accept this beast and that willful suspension of disbelief would be critical. We were faced with long scenes of dialogue between the dragon and real actors, in full light of day, where an audience could study and compare computer graphics to reality. Draco would be seen during the day, at night, in firelight, walking through grass, flying, splashing in water, swimming underwater, walking in the rain, holding an actor in his mouth and breathing fire. Most importantly, we needed to make him act, and try to ensure that the audience would develop an emotional tie to him.

The "Dragonheart" crew of over 70 people, produced 182 Dragon shots (covering 23 minutes of screen time), and 30 non-dragon shots. The entire post-production schedule was one year. James Straus led our animation team. The amount and complexity of the required facial animation required us to write special in-house software known as Caricature (written by Cary Philips). This allowed the animators more interactivity when dealing with subtle facial expressions and lip sync issues. In addition, the tongue had to move correctly to provide the proper enunciation. Animators studied videotapes of Sean Connery (voice of Draco) and worked with Rob Cohen to make Draco "act".

An enormous amount of detail was put into the Draco computer model as he was going to be seen up close, filling the full screen in broad daylight. He had to have detailed facial muscles in addition to body muscles. This resulted in a model several times more complex than those designed for "Jurassic Park". In addition to skin texture, we also had hard skin areas, horns, spikes, scales, teeth and gold scales. Each of these areas had to be painted, skinned and treated differently by the rendering software.

Draco's eyes had iris'(that animated with lighting changes), veins and wetness. His claws had to be fully articulated as in a real actor. His wings needed to be translucent when backlit (with a texture map that shows veins and other details) and iridescent in certain light. They had to be able to fold up and unfold, as well as be animated for him to fly. All the subtle animations had to continue through all shots to keep him alive. This meant creating and animating the nostrils as well as the breathing in his chest. We composited in additional details such as saliva when he opens his mouth wide. Reflections of surrounding scenes, the campfire, or Dennis Quaid ("Bowen") were also added to his eyes. Shooting for "Dragonheart" took place on location in Slovakia over a five months period. All but two weeks was shot outdoors with various weather conditions and terrain. Although most of the camera plates are moving camera shots, no motion control was used. To allow the director, and the director of photography, as much freedom as possible (and to save time), all shots were later matchmoved on the computer.

For this project we used an electronic transit system that provided accurate 3D measurements. This was critical since we were locking a slow-moving or sitting dragon to a slow-moving camera. Any misalignment would be obvious, much more than the sky replacements or the fast camera moves we would also be doing. This information was recorded on a PowerBook and then entered into the animation system for matchmoving. This cut down the time to do post matchmoving enormously.

Each shot was different, so we set up an 18-inch posable dragon in front of the camera for the director and actors to see a facsimile of the finished shot in addition to the storyboards. Various targets were used so Dennis and the other actors would have the correct eyeline whether Draco was sitting, standing, etc. Various markers were placed in the scene and measured so these could be used for matchmoving later. All scenes with actors in front of Draco were composited using rotoscoping techniques and no bluescreen was used.