As a Hopkins freshman, Cary Phillips ’85, MS ’85, took a special-interest course in chemistry. What fascinated him most wasn’t the subject itself but a new way of depicting it: a 3-D, computer-generated illustration of a chemical process.
Phillips’ initial foray into digital imagery has led to a 20-year career with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the visual effects and animation studio created by George Lucas for the original Star Wars film.
The technical details of Phillips’ work are complex, but in short he creates software that allows animators to make an imaginary creature or character move and express itself. While other studios do full animations, ILM specializes in integrating computer-generated and filmed images. For example, the squid-faced Davy Jones character in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie was a composition of actor Bill Nighy’s performance and voice and ILM digital effects.
As R&D supervisor, Phillips oversees the technical details of the three to five major productions and three to five minor productions that ILM handles each year. His past work has included all the Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Transformers movies and the first six Harry Potter movies, for starters.
“When you’re in the middle of it, you’re pulling your hair out—it can be extremely stressful,” Phillips says. “But to be part of films that have been seen around the world can be very gratifying—especially for an engineer.”