Advances in technology can open doors but glass ceilings are smashed by the creativity of its users.

There’s a strange poetic symmetry that ‘Jurassic Punk’, a documentary focusing on one of the godfathers of modern VFX Steve "Spaz" Williams comes out this month.

Not just because the documentary arrives nearly 30 years after the theatrical release of Spielberg's classic, or that creativity once again appears to be on the verge of being reshaped by technology, but because the film premiers just months after one of Jurassic Park's most iconic scenes (and most revolutionary for VFX), was recreated in Dreams by Krenautican. Whereas the original Industrial Light and Magic team working on Jurassic Park was composed of multidisciplinary experts, using the era's most cutting-edge software and equipment to map out this new frontier, Krenautican recreated the scene at home using nothing but a control pad and a PlayStation......on his own.

I expect you have all seen the Spielberg classic, but if you haven't seen the incredible homemade homage built from scratch (including, animation, textures and lighting) by Krenautican please see the video below.

There is a full 'making of ' available here if you have enough time, it's ridiculous.

Like everyone else, what initially caught my attention with Krenautican's remake using Dreams was the sheer quality, and attention to detail coupled with the fact I really can't shake the fact it was built using a controller! The reason it continues to have my attention is because this scene provides a rare opportunity to pause and consider all of the progress that has been made in computer graphics and computer processing that we take for granted. Although cheaper more capable hardware and software solutions make it easier than ever for a creative to jump into CGI, VFX or digital design, it's important to remember we all stand on the shoulders of giants (both Industrial Light & Magic, Alias Wavefront and the extinct variety) every time we fire the software up.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

I'm sure the stop-motion scenes animated by Willis H. O'Brien in the 20s for King King or Phil Tippett on Star Wars would have had a similar impact on the generations before me, but there was a time when CGI was literally magic. The cinema-going audience didn't understand the mysterious process that brought these characters to the big screen, we just marvelled. In fact, very few bar industry insiders had the insight to deconstruct how the scenes in Terminator 2 or the Abyss were generated. Less would have had the vision to forecast how important visualisation would become for supporting good communication across all industries in the 30 years following those early days in the CGI wild west. And that's exactly what puts Krenautican's achievement into perspective. The scene he created perfectly demonstrates how technology that we might perceive as inaccessible or magic today (and completely out of reach by mere mortals) will be democratised tomorrow. While the tools and era differ, what Steve and Krenautican (O'Brien and Tippet) share is a mindset that all the best creatives have, a desire to push their toolset in ways others won't with the aim of finding unique solutions.

Although we won't be walking down the red carpet or receiving an award for releasing that bumper, stitching a model, setting viewpoints up for a review or tweaking those texture maps before clocking off for the weekend, it's cool to be able to trace Alias back to its origins in the knowledge those early pioneers using the tool were rockstars winning Oscars. Considering so many of my friends, colleagues, students and I have made a career using this software I find it humbling that without that successful proof of concept to Spielberg, who knows what we would be using instead?

History doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes

Advances in current software and hardware supercharged by ML, suggest the next generation of creatives will have access to a toolset exponentially more sophisticated than any generation before them. As a result, for the first time in recent history, the creative tools looming on the horizon offer a power genuinely indistinguishable from magic and promise to move artists and designers in directions none of us forecasted. Although not identical, these conditions for change bare a resemblance to the frontier navigated by Steve and ILM. We have seen steady incremental improvements to our creative processes for decades but today we stand on the precipice of a complete rewriting of the rule books for digital design tools (possibly all software used in the studio).

That's where I see massive parallels between the fledgling VFX industry of the late 80s and the arrival of today's large language models, transformers, neural networks and generative AI platforms. I find myself thinking - what would Steve do?

I think there is value in looking to the past to inform good decisions today. Not just the way ILM approached technical challenges, but their strategy and philosophy towards experimenting with new technology.

Dare to be different.

Challenge the status quo.

Build entirely new creative pipelines if required but work alongside the existing domain expertise

If you want to explore creativity using this new cocktail of tools don't wait for the market to tell you to, the best way to form an opinion is to try those tools out yourself. Applying conventional wisdom, for unconventional solutions isn't always the best decision. If Steve and the ILM team had been less confident, the producers would have gone down the route of traditional stop motion (imagine a stop motion Jurassic Park, nah). It took courage to incorporate brand-new untested technology mid-way through pre-production and even a little madness to push them to the limits they did.

“The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” - Alvin Toffler

Just because a new category of ai enhanced creativity is on the horizon, new technology alone won't raise the bar of creativity. There is lots of discussion surrounding this wave of technology killing off creativity. Personally, I believe generative ai/ai enhanced workflows present a "rising tides lift all boats" scenario (just like moves to calculators, photoshop, digital photography, digital modelling or XR before). If we are all riding this wave together, it will still be the captains of creativity (human users), that steer us to success. Just like every other period of change, it will be the industry's most resourceful and imaginative users, those who tame the technology like Steve or Krenautican who will develop new means of creativity, hopefully leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for their contemporaries to follow.

In summary, next time we find ourselves complaining about a function not working or that our real-time shadows don't look right, remember what the pioneers had to endure, invent and develop with a fraction of the functionality to build worlds and characters that still hold up today. What are we going to build today that still holds up in 30 years?

Someone somewhere is the next Steve and hopefully, they will see things most won't and pursue a new creative direction that pulls the entire community forward. With the launches of Midjourney V4, 2.0 Stable Diffusion and gpt-4 just around the corner I just hope this generation's Steve is equally confident and if necessary has a Spielberg willing to take a chance on them and their new unconventional methods.

Even if you’ve never fired up digital modelling or visualisation package (and have no intention to)........if you're a fan of T2, The Abyss, Jurassic Park South Park or any Pixar film, we owe it to ourselves to give Jurassic Punk a watch.

If you can't wait for that long but want some insight into the ILM story, the video below is a great summary.

Thanks for the heads up on the documentary Phil Botley and Pascal Seifert