Edward A. Kramer
Edward A Kramer is a computer graphics animation artist, who was on the team that won an Academy Award for visual effects in 2006 for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.
Early life[edit]
Edward Alan Kramer was born on April 30, 1955, in Brooklyn, New York, and in early childhood moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where he grew up. He became president of his class at Briarcliff High School in DeKalb County, Georgia. Bonnie Arnold, executive producer of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy and co-producer of Toy Story (1995), was a high school classmate. In 1977, Kramer earned a bachelor of science degree in psychology from Duke University. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980 with a master of arts degree in film production, writing his master’s thesis on “Producing Computer Animation for Public Television.”
Image West[edit]
Kramer moved to Los Angeles after film school and was hired t as a computer animation artist with Image West in Hollywood.[1] Trained by animators Roy Weinstock and Fred Kessler, Kramer became the last animator to learn and use the full capabilities of the last “analog” Scanimate computer for production work, just before the digital video revolution began.[2] During his time at the company from 1981 to 1983, Kramer created animated logos for Hitachi, Danskin and the 1984 Olympics, as well as show openers for The Merv Griffin Show and the 1982 World Series on NBC. He also worked with legendary animator Friz Freleng to animate the voice from the magic wishing well in “Daffy Duck’s Fantastic Island.”[3] With art director Henry Kline II, Kramer used Scanimate to create the Space Sucker video game for an episode of Diff’rent Strokes called “Shoot-out at the O.K. Arcade.” He and Kline also created the synthesizer music and sound effects for the show.[4]
Editel[edit]
In 1983 Kramer was hired as senior animator at Editel, also in Hollywood, using one of only two Computer Image System IV devices made. The other was used at RTL in Luxembourg. System IV was the last animation system from Denver, Colorado-based Computer Image Corporation.[5][6]
CompuGraph Designs[edit]
In 1984, Kramer moved to CompuGraph Designs, a division of Modern Telecommunication Inc. in New York. The BOSCH FGS-4000 had been released in 1983, and CompuGraph was one of the first companies in the United States to set up a post-production facility around it. This is the device used by Rushes Studio in London to create the 3-D animations for the Dire Straits music video Money for Nothing. As senior animator, Kramer was among the first in the world to use the system to build, light and animate polygon-based 3-D objects, then composite the images digitally using the new Abekas A60 digital video framestore.[7][8]
Working under Mike Saz and alongside animator Nat Zimmerman and designer Janet Scabrini, Ed created animations for HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, the Lifetime Cable Network, ABC Sports and ESPN, among many others.[9] Ed’s work won two Art Direction Magazine awards and a Monitor Award in 1986, and two CLIO awards in 1987.[10]
NASA[edit]
In 1987 Kramer moved to NASA headquarters in Houston for a one-year project to create a computer-graphics film about an unmanned mission to Mars.[11] With offices just down the hall from the Mission Control room at Johnson Space Center, he became one of the first animators to use the newest CGI system, the Advanced Visualizer, which had been released by Wavefront in 1986.
The first commercial CGI software package that allowed users to add their own programming tools, Wavefront had advanced modeling, animating and lighting tools, and introduced features like bump mapping, reflection mapping and calculated cast shadows. Kramer used images from the Mariner Mars mission to texture map the Martian surface, and helped develop code to keep the rover’s wheels on the irregular surface of the planet as it moved.[12][13] The animation won an award at the 1989 International Computer Animation Competition.
DESIGNefx[edit]
From 1988 to 1992, Kramer worked for Crawford Post (DESIGNefx) in Atlanta. Almost the entire DESIGNefx crew of CGI artists of the late 1980s rose to prominence in the 1990s at facilities such as Industrial Light & Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks and PDI/DreamWorks, including Bill Schultz, Henry LaBounta, Jim Moorhead, Barry Dempsey, Greg Killmaster, Dennis Webb, Barbara Townsend, Robert Minsk, Tony Plett, Barbara T. LaBounta, Bil White and Lisa Reynolds; designers Kerry Kenemer, Frederike Gravenstein, Ran Coney and Fred Sotherland; and cel animators John Ryan, David Strandquist and C. Martin “Clay” Croker. Charlie Willis was manager of DESIGNefx, and Barbara Wunschel was production coordinator.
At DESIGNefx, Kramer was the CGI animator for Carl Sagan’s live coverage of “Voyager: Rendezvous with Neptune” in 1989 on TBS. During the design process with Sagan, Kramer suggested the Earth might end up looking like a ball of yarn, an analogy Sagan liked and then decided to use in his narration.[14]
.
Kleiser/Walczak[edit]
In 1993, Kramer was recruited by Kleiser/Walczak Construction Company to work on a project for the opening of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. Jeff Kleiser and his partner Diana Walczak assembled a team of skilled artists to create CGI effects for visual effects artist Douglas Trumbull, who had been tasked with creating three multimedia attractions for the hotel’s grand opening. For the Kleiser/Walczak Construction Company, Kramer served as CGI supervisor for the Theater of Time attraction, where a VistaVision 70mm camera was turned sideways to project on a 70-foot tall vertical screen. All the Wavefront renders were at extremely high 4K resolution, rendered and projected at 48 frames per second. Special fractal code had to be developed for the Wavefront software to visualize Trumbull’s script, and Kramer wrote software to allow his designers to sculpt with recently introduced NURBS geometry.
Kramer then worked for Kleiser/Waczak on an uncredited behind-the-scenes contribution to the movie Stargate (1993), where he helped in the initial studio setup and devised techniques for the helmet morph shots. Next he served as head animator for Clear and Present Danger, for which Kramer modeled, textured, animated, lit and composited most of the smart bomb sequence.
In another project at the company, Kramer worked with Joel Hynek and Kleiser to create a new version of the Lady with a Torch logo that appears before every Columbia Pictures film. In that version, “the torch sparkles, the background clouds move across the sky, and a ring of light shimmers around the lady.”[15]
Industrial Light + Magic[edit]
For 12 years beginning in 1994, Kramer worked in CGI lighting and visual effects design at Industrial Light + Magic in Marin County, just north of San Francisco. ILM was established in 1977 by film director and producer George Lucas. Kramer was a computer graphics sequence supervisor and a senior technical director for 24 feature-length films. At ILM, Kramer and his colleagues invented many techniques that became standard in professional computer graphics.[16] Other early visual effects pioneers with whom he worked include Dennis Muren, John Knoll, Ben Snow, Stefen Fangmeier and Bill George on movies directed by Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay.
Kramer was on the team that won an Academy Award for visual effects in 2006 for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Kramer contributed lighting, compositing, surfacing and particle work on the Kraken and Davy Jones’ henchmen sequences. His work contributed to Academy Award nominations in the visual effects category for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, The Perfect Storm (first shot of the “killer” wave), Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (iconic shot of Qui-Gon Jinn), Jurassic Park: The Lost World (T-Rex near swimming pool) and Twister (antenna through the windshield).
Kramer was promoted to sequence supervisor for The Mummy (scarab beetles) and also supervised on The Mummy Returns (scarabs and jungle destruction), Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (droid factory and end battle), Galaxy Quest (rock monster) and Son of the Mask (photorealistic baby closeup).
Other films in which Kramer’s work appears include Clear and Present Danger, Pulse, Deep Impact, Twister, 101 Dalmatians, Jumanji, Van Helsing, Stargate, Herbie Fully Loaded, The Island, Dreamcatcher and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Freelance work and teaching[edit]
In 2006, Kramer moved with his family to Denver and launched a freelance business. His clients have included STARZ, Lockheed-Martin and The Discovery Channel. He also spent a year creating CGI for futuristic medical simulators used to train surgeons virtually on complex new procedures. A campaign logo he created for Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper earned Kramer a platinum Pixie Award in 2013 . It is the highest honor given by the American Pixel Academy for work in the moving pixels industry, which includes effects, animation and motion graphics.
Kramer taught Maya software at the Colorado Film School in 2010 before joining the Art Institute of Colorado in 2011. In his eight years there as a full professor, he taught his professional approach to modeling, lighting, surfacing and dynamic simulation techniques to the next generation of CGI artists. In 2018, Kramer became an adjunct professor at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and was named president of the Pioneers Group of SIGGRAPH, a U.S. conference on computer graphics held annually. The Pioneers Group is composed of CGI artists who worked in and developed the industry in its infancy.
An authority on the history of computer graphics, Kramer has spoken at conferences around the world, including SIGGRAPH; Cleveland Comic Con; FMX in Stuttgart, Germany; WorldCon in Dublin, Ireland; and the National Association of Broadcasters. He is a recognized participant in CG events closer to home, such as Mile Hi Con, Starfest, and both the Denver and Colorado Springs Comic Cons.
Documentary[edit]
In 2018, Kramer began producing a documentary about the artists behind some of the most famous CGI moments in movie history, called Wizards of Hollywood: Movie Magic Secrets from the Artists who Invented CGI. Kramer is executive producer, and Windy Borman, director and co-producer of The Eyes of Thailand, a 2012 documentary about efforts to help elephants injured by landmines, is producer/director.
Kramer also has a YouTube Channel dedicated to CGI history, featuring his voiceover commentary and clips of interviews with CGI artists who worked in the industry's early days.[17]
Personal life[edit]
Kramer is a musician who plays piano and synthesizers. He has two children: Hannah, born in 1998, and Jeremy, born in 2002.
References[edit]
- ↑ Carlson, Wayne E. “Image West / Dolphin Productions / Ron Hays.” https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/graphicshistory/chapter/12-3-image-west-dolphin-productions-ron-hays/. Computer Graphics and Computer Animation: A Retrospective Overview. The Ohio State University. June 20, 2017. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ↑ “Scanimate Alumni.” http://scanimate.com/people1.html Scanimate News. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ↑ “The Basement Tapes Ed Kramer Daffy Duck's Fantastic Island.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqWH9Ob292Y&list=PLf9VkFZC3s9OMOy-nHL2lY5IciBmqFUIA&index=22. YouTube. September 8, 2016. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
- ↑ “Shoot-out at the O.K. Arcade.” Diff’rent Strokes. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0560027/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm%23cast. IMDb. 1982. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
- ↑ Clark, David R. “Computer Image Corporation.” Computers for Imagemaking. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080240596500164. ScienceDirect. 1981. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ↑ Harrison, Laurie. ”About Lee.” https://www.bulbapp.com/u/about-lee. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ↑ Abekas A60 Framestore. https://graphics.stanford.edu/lab/video/Old_Equipment/a60.html. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
- ↑ Abekas A60 Digital Disk Recorder Operations Manual. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/abekas/Abekas_A60_Digital_Disk_Recorder_Operations_Manual_Mar88.pdf. March 1988. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
- ↑ Lights, Camera, Magic.” https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lights-camera-magic. Duke Magazine. October 1, 2004. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
- ↑ “The Basement Tapes Ed Kramer 1986 CompuGraph Commercial Reel 1.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZfbgUNdNuc&list=PLf9VkFZC3s9OuvpcHS8lo8LrCzBSozIUK&index=6&t=0s. August 17, 2017. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ↑ “Lights, Camera, Magic.” https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/lights-camera-magic. Duke Magazine. October 1, 2004. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
- ↑ “Mission to Mars: Mars Sample Return.” https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/mars-sample-return-msr/. NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. California Institute of Technology. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ↑ “Mars Rover Sample Return Mission.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE4ThqABoMo. NASA Johnson Space Center Missions Planning Division. September 1988. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ↑ Voyager: Rendezvous with Neptune.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwb-o5N9LBM&t=1931s. August 25, 1989. Retrieved October 8, 2019.
- ↑ “The History of a Logo: The Lady with the Torch.” http://www.reelclassics.com/Studios/Columbia/columbia-article-logo.htm. Reel Classics. March 24, 2001. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
- ↑ “Faculty Shares Lessons Learned from Illustrious Computer Graphics Career.” https://www.artinstitutes.edu/about/blog/faculty-shares-lessons-learned-from-illustrious-computer-graphics-career. Art Institute of Colorado. October 6, 2015. Retrieved October 2, 2019.
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCa2OzKEXQfIqAHlXOjJ8seA
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