Matt Hanson: On a project as massive as the last two Matrix films I’m sure it’s a question of where to begin, so what was the initial kernel for you?

Craig Hayes: We wanted to create something unique. Something that was not duplicating a real city. To do this we had to explain different processes to people, as the visualization was not thoroughly fleshed out, but the seeds were present. We decided that the way to create the city was for the effects to be procedurally driven. Patterns would emerge. We had the freedom to engineer a system, and custom design something to do that.

You mentioned the seeds, can you give me some idea of the things you had to work with?
Key art from George Hall [color interpretations] and Geof Darrow [conceptual]. We had vistas to work with, but needed to engineer three dimensions and depth. So we thought about having key buildings and ‘hero towers’. There was a massive amount of information generated, so we wanted to break it down. We defined tubes and connectors, and found real city analogies. Suburbs and skyscrapers. We looked at other categories like water mains and made components for all of these things.

I like the fact elements move into a production shorthand and internal jargon so quickly. Can you go into more detail on these ‘hero towers’?

With the hero towers we broke them down into stylistic components. For example the Darrow towers which came from the engine had a lobster-like top. Everything was modular so it became easier to create.

In parallel we had a team defining processes and visualizations. The job created multiple challenges. Things had to work in a normal lighting environment and also in ‘Neo-vision’. This neovision, like an x-ray of the energy of structures, had to be built into all the modelling.

We used Renderman so we could prepackage the geometries. It allowed us to define three to four different resolutions of buildings, stepping up from four polygons for those in the distance to so many polygons in a wireframe render you couldn’t see through it. The program also built in skeletons for the internal ‘Neo-vision’ structures.

Can you give me a breakdown of the software you used to do this?

We created particle generation routines using Renderman and dynamics in Maya, then it was a case of tweaking and modifying what was ‘grown’. We also used Studio Paint, Photoshop and Shake.

The blocking and layout was already present from the storyboards but it needed fleshing out. More color or Magma. This was originally articulated as blue sparks. We liked the informal activity and electrics, the fractal patterns. To give them more depth we added photographic elements to these. We used soap and aluminum powder and flakes in water to suggest movement and light, and added these to the computer generated models to make them more organic. It was fun to add this stuff to the CGI, so for example, I sent my PA out to get a lobster and spray painted it silver to study surface qualities as a reference.

What other references did you use in creating this totally computer-generated moviescape to give it some grounding in reality, some familiarity?

One of the things we did, being based in San Francisco Bay, is we went eight miles out, away from the city and looked back to see how much was visible. That helped give us a cue for our animations.

The buildings that we generated equated to being 2500 feet tall. Actually, the first iterations were miles tall, but we drew this back as they looked too unreal on-screen, even though the custom program grew them from feasible rules. Keeping the height under control created a nicer aesthetic.
I used a friends Tesla coil and filmed it with a high-definition camera, to see all this electricity shooting off steel and rigging. We used that as reference for the 3D sparks on the harvest fields.

For the Neo-vision we looked at how jellyfish moved underwater, in an acqueous environment. It was the idea of looking at what was not normally viewable. From this idea came the thought about nervous impulses of energy being like tenticles.

How long did you it take to create this mammoth environment?

The ‘Scorched Earth’ comprised 180 shots, over a huge environment. It took 18 months with a team of up to 100 at the most intense points of production.

*This is an edited version of the full interview, altered for clarity and readability, which is intended to reflect the true views of the interviewee in a fair and concise manner

Matt Hanson: What was your brief for creating the I,Robot material?
Stephan Martiniere: From conversation mainly, Patrick [Tatopoulos, the production designer] was also giving me some very loose sketches as well as photographic references for either material ideas or just feel.


Can you describe how you work up the concept paintings for I,Robot?

The process is very similar for each illustration. I start from either a loose sketch given to me by Patrick or one that I create. Once the sketch is approved Patrick and I discuss the feel, mood, color palette, and texture to be used in the illustration. From there I go directly to a detail painting which has taken me a week or two do produce. Patrick knows how I work and has always been comfortable waiting until the painting is almost at a final stage. Since my paintings are done digitally, in layers, it is easy to make changes at a late stage.

Having worked on quite a few science fiction films over the years, how do you think your work on them has evolved, and how do you think sci-fi has changed in this time?

After many years as a digital painter I have become more confident with the medium. After so many projects I acquired my own painting tricks and technique that are very efficient and personal. Painting digitally also led me to 3D which I foresee will become more and more a part of my working tools. Computer 3D is what changed sci-fi these last ten years. Special FX have become better and more ambitious, but so far it is mainly an evolution in the looks rather than in the stories and new ideas.

Do you do a lot of research for concept designs, or is it all imagination?

I tend to use my imagination more at the beginning stages when I’m doing concepts, and finding compositions, original and unusual shapes. I do more research when the concept goes into the painting stage to find a mood, some texture or particular elements such as street signs, windows, etc.

What has been your favourite film to work on, and why?

Three of them were my particular favorites. The first was the motion ride film The Race for Atlantis. This film was all CG, projected on a IMAX screen and view with 3D goggles. That film allowed me to create almost an entire imaginary world. It was conceptually very creative and the end result was stunning.

The second one was Star Wars Episodes 2 and 3, although I don’t know yet how much of my work made it to the screen. As a kid and burgeoning artist I grew up surrounded by the visual impact that Star Wars created. Many years later I finally had the chance to participate in the design for the sequels. It was like a dream come true.

The third and final one is I,Robot. This film allowed me to create some very intricate paintings that I considered being some of my best work for film to date. Seeing so many of these illustrations making it to the screen is extremely rewarding.

*This is an edited version of the full interview which is intended to reflect the true views of the interviewee in a fair and concise manner

Seeing into the future, gazing into that crystal ball, has always been a very human preoccupation and we have never been as obsessed with it as we are now. Millennial pressures pull apart present day certainties and, as they do, we look to invent a future that we can somehow solve. Science fiction films are a useful cultural barometer, a touchstone for the hot button topics of the day. In them, things can be said that are left unresolved and unspoken in the everyday.

The worlds created by science fiction cinema, whether full-blown fantasy or fiction a few degrees separated from the facts of the real world, have always been more about our present than the future they purport to be about. With the blossoming of digital effects, these visions have become increasingly bold, more seductive, visceral. They have an amplified power to allure and revolt audiences, with glimpses into technologically fantastic worlds or dystopic societies as the devices to recreate these fantasies, these simulacra become ever more advanced.

Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) was a landmark in effects-driven science fiction (or science fantasy as the purists would have it) film just as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was in terms of bringing the genre onto the serious filmmaking agenda. But this book really begins in the early 80s, because this was when the modern science fiction film was born. 1982 was a year which saw the seminal movies Bladerunner and Tron released. Both have cast their shadow over our cinematic visions of the future over since. Vivian Sobchack labelled Bladerunner’s look as “future noir�?, a style that updates the urban dystopia, chaos, and sprawl that existed in that earliest and most influential sci-fi, 1927’s Metropolis. Tron has been analysed less, but accurately foreshadowed the growing contemporary focus on virtually-inflected worlds, with its groundbreaking use of computer graphics to create a digital arcade milieu.
This book is about those internal and external spaces, and the subsequent evolution of these environments. Science fiction is peerless as a framing device for our concerns, and the use of software programs to map and texture virtual environments to construct our fictions only enhances its efficacy.

We are in a golden age of building fantasies. These dream makers who construct cinematic images take their inspiration from a myriad of architectural influences, because architects are concerned with the invention and design of space and environments in which humanity can evolve and live in the decades ahead. In turn, our spaces are becoming progressively more cinematic as the future gets nearer and architectural influences loop back and feedback off of these cinematic visions.

It’s noteworthy that, as we become steeped in invisible networks of data and information, science fiction environments have become more involved with the augmented and virtual realities of digital space and how we as humans orient ourselves around this shifting relationship with our physical and non-physical habitats. Films like I, Robot, the Animatrix series, and A.I. delve back into the central paradox of our relationship with technology, or techno-fear and techno-lust. As the environments and machines become more intelligent around us, do we as humans become more insignificant, less unique in the cosmos? Whether the individual film is about genetics, nanotechnology, the nuclear holocaust, race, class, power, or interplanetary war and terrorism, it all comes back to the question of what makes us sui generis. The best futurescapes are created to explore and reflect that fact.

My current top 15 SF films:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Blade Runner
3. Avalon
4. Solaris (original)
5. Alien Quadrilogy
6. Strange Days
7. Akira
8. Gattaca
9. Matrix trilogy
10. Star Wars trilogy (IV-VI)
11. Minority Report
12. Casshern
13. Dune
14. Twelve Monkeys
15. Tron

Journey from 1980s’ sci-fi, the dawn of the “digital age,” through revolutionary CG blockbusters, to the new era of “digital backlot” productions. Key creative personnel behind these movies reveal how they created such visionary city and space-scapes, through original interviews and stunning, previously unpublished concept drawings and production stills.

Featured films:
Blade Runner, Tron, Dune, Brazil, Batman, Patlabor, Total Recall, Alien3, Memories, The City of Lost Children, Johnny Mnemonic, The Fifth Element, Starship Troopers, Dark City, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Metropolis, Minority Report, Solaris, Code 46, The Matrix Revolutions, Wonderful Days, Natural City, I,Robot, Appleseed, Immortel, Casshern, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, 2046, Innocence: Ghost in the Shell 2