How To Train Your Dragon

Interview with VFX Supervisor Craig Ring - How To Train Your Dragon

10 QUESTIONS FOR CRAIG RING

1. Where did you grow up?

I lived until high school in a small town in Tennessee called Tullahoma. It was a great place to grow up. I would spend all day playing in the woods with my friends, and only go home for lunch. There was even a waterfall that my friends and I could hike to through the woods. The waterfall would occasionally be covered in icicles during the winter. It was beautiful.

2. How did you get started as a Visual Effects Supervisor in films?

I started out supervising effects work on commercials, which was a great way to learn since you have a smaller crew and get exposed to a variety of types of work. After getting the opportunity to be a CG Supervisor on Antz, I found that I really liked working on all CG films, since you could be a part of the whole film, not just the effects shots.

3. Where do you get your inspiration from?

I love watching movies, and obviously I am inspired by the great work being done by people like Roger Deakins. I love his lighting, and it’s been really exciting to get to work closely with him on Dragon. I think it’s also important to spend time enjoying other arts, too, to keep yourself fresh. I enjoy spending time at the many great art museums in the Los Angeles area, going to live performances, and attending some of the great artistic development classes offered at DreamWorks. I also do a lot of photography, and really enjoyed attending a 5 day landscape photography workshop during which it was great to focus full time on image making of a different kind.

4. Was it fun to work on Forrest Gump?

It was great. It was the first film I worked on, and I thought it was going to be really, really bad, since I had no idea what it was about, and only saw stuff out of context . I was really excited when I finally saw the completed movie and it turned out to be great. It’s pretty lucky to get your first film credit on a movie that wins Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Visual Effects.

5. What is your favorite band?

I really like Arcade Fire. I saw them live a few years ago when they opened for David Byrne of the Talking Heads, and was blow away by both their music and how charismatic they were as performers. It’s great that they are becoming well enough known now that one of their songs was used for the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are.

6. What do you like best about working at DreamWorks Animation?

The people. We spend years creating the films here, and no matter how compelling the work, if you don’t enjoy the people you’re working with, it can be a terrible experience. I’m lucky enough at DreamWorks to be able to work with incredibly talented people, who are also people I like spending time with. I even met my wife here when working on Antz.

7. Do you have a favorite pastime or hobby?

When you have two small kids, I think they are kind of your 2nd full time job, pastime, and hobby. When I’m not at work, I’m usually spending time with them. I also enjoy photography and reading. Luckily, kids are great subjects for photographs, and my daughter is now in 3rd grade, and loves to sit next to me on the couch and read her books while I read mine.

8. What do you think is the greatest visual effect ever done?

I think it’s hard to pick a single one. There have been many great moments in a wide range of films. One of the most influential ones for me was seeing the water creature in the Abyss. It showed how comuter graphics could change the game in visual effects. Suddenly, you could create real, organic looking elements that looked and moved in ways only limited by your imagination. That sequence really led to me working in computer animation for a career.

9. If you were not a visual effects supervisor what would you like to be doing?

I’ve always been interested in both technology and art. If computer graphics hadn’t come along to unify those things, I’d probably be doing either product design or architecture, two fields that also mix the technical and the artistic.

10. Any tips for someone who would like to do what you do for a living?

I think people focus too much on learing software and doing computer graphics. It’s also important to get out into the real world. The touchstones for everything we design and animate are always in the world around us. That’s why we take trips to gather reference images whenever we start a movie. Even if you’re going to stylize or caricature something, you have to know the thing you’re stylizing inside and out before you depart from it.

Finally, work hard. Don’t get discouraged. Enjoy the steps along the way. If you don’t enjoy doing the work, you’ll never become great at it.