Artists and Engineers: The Real Story Behind 50 Years of Visual Effects Innovation
Rob Bredow’s TED Talk reminds us that the “AI is coming for our jobs” panic has happened before—and why artist-driven innovation always wins.
Rob Bredow’s recent TED Talk is basically a love letter to artist-driven innovation in visual effects - and honestly, it’s a refreshing take on all the AI doom-and-gloom headlines we’re seeing right now.
He opens with that iconic Star Wars opening shot and the Dykstraflex camera rig that made it possible. The whole thesis is that we’ve been here before - new tech threatening to replace artists - but what actually happens is way more interesting than the panic suggests.
”I Feel Extinct”
The Jurassic Park story is perfect for this moment. Phil Tippett famously said “I feel extinct” when he saw the first CG dinosaur test looping on a monitor at ILM. Spielberg loved the line so much he put it in the movie. But that’s not what actually happened to Phil or stop-motion animation.
They ended up building this incredible dinosaur input device - basically a stop-motion armature with encoders on each joint that fed animation data directly into the computer. The oldest animation technique in the book combined with the newest technology available. Phil’s team animated frame-by-frame like they always had, and the CG artists took it from there - adding skin, lighting, rendering, even touching up the animation digitally to create the final shots.
Innovation thrives when old and new technologies are blended together. Jurassic Park broke all new ground in computer graphics, but many of the techniques were exactly the same as before. The animators still taped themselves on video for reference. They still drew storyboards. They just had new tools to realize those visions.
The Pattern Repeats
Same pattern with the de-aged Harrison Ford in Dial of Destiny. The team hand-tuned generative AI models on his past performances as Indiana Jones (with his permission, obviously). But they also built a full CG version of his performance - CG skin, CG eyes, all the traditional VFX details.
Why both? Because the AI nailed the likeness and could pull all the details out of Harrison’s unencumbered performance on set. But it wasn’t as good at the fine controls and details. That’s when the CG model came to the rescue. The final result was a blend of the two, and Harrison’s response was perfect: “It’s pretty good, it feels like me.”
Artist-driven innovation again. Experienced artists driving the brand-new techniques.
The Mandalorian and Real-Time Everything
The Mandalorian LED volume stuff is Rob leaning into another example of tech and creativity working hand-in-hand. Jon Favreau had a vision for a giant Disney+ Star Wars series, but they didn’t have a normal film schedule. Rather than flying the cast around the world to find exotic locations, they brought those locations to a single soundstage in Manhattan Beach.
The LED wall acted as a virtual production background, immersing the actors and entire crew in virtual worlds. Some locations weren’t even from our world. And those background walkers you see? Stop-motion animated by Tippett’s shop. Still not extinct after all these years.
It’s basically the evolution of practical effects - a combination of the oldest technique in the book with the latest real-time computer graphics to bring an illusion together on screen in front of the whole cast and crew. Every department working together to create life in the scene.
What Happens When Artists Get AI Tools?
Rob premiered a test from artist Landis Fields - a probe droid exploring a new Star Wars planet, created in two weeks by one person using AI tools. He’s careful to say it’s not a final product and they’re not announcing a new show. It’s a test to explore what it would feel like if you sent a probe droid to a new planet and what would it see.
The designs aren’t final Star Wars characters. It’s not a finished product. For a show or movie, you need a team. Lucasfilm and ILM don’t think we’re just around the corner from one or two people making a film in a dark room by themselves. They benefit too much from the diverse skill set of artists and technicians who work on their films.
What Landis created is basically a moving mood board. And how much more powerful is a tool like that to get an early impression of a show as you’re deciding what to do next? That’s the real opportunity here.
Jobs, Tools, and the Next 50 Years
Rob acknowledges it’s natural to think about jobs as these tools continue to evolve and get more powerful. Back in the days of models and miniatures and motion control, there were only a couple dozen people in the whole world who knew how to build and operate those complicated machines.
Today, there are literally hundreds of thousands of artists around the world who know the latest CG techniques and visual effects workflows. There’s a huge opportunity for creative, talented people with these skills. And as the tools continue to evolve, ILM takes their responsibility seriously to grow and develop the talent working on their projects. This is how they’ve been doing it for the last 50 years. Some of the artists who worked on the original Star Wars are still working with them today.
The tech companies on their own don’t have the whole picture - they’re looking at a lot of different opportunities. Filmmakers are thinking about it from a storytelling perspective. And storytellers need better artist-focused tools. Text prompts alone aren’t great ways to make a movie.
As these tools get more powerful, we need to use them thoughtfully with the full permission of talent - like the Harrison Ford example where he gave permission for his likeness to be used and they had full access and rights to the training data.
Artist-Driven Innovation Always Wins
What I love about Rob’s take is that he’s not scared of the tech, but he’s also not naive about it. His point isn’t that AI is going to replace artists or that one person can make a film alone. It’s that when you give powerful tools to talented artists who understand storytelling, magic happens.
Every major innovation in filmmaking - from stop-motion to CG to real-time LED volumes - expanded what was possible and created more opportunities for talented people who knew how to use the tools. The people freaking out about AI replacing creative jobs are missing the bigger picture.
George Lucas founded ILM 50 years ago to solve visual storytelling challenges in his films. What he did was put artists side-by-side with engineers, working together to innovate and create the future. Artist-driven innovation has been their model ever since, and it works because the artists are driving.
The next generation of creative tools will lean on all these amazing innovations. And then we can imagine that next game-changer, that next Star Destroyer moment that’s going to light up screens around the world. It’s going to be even more imaginative and creative than the original that inspired us all in 1977.
We’ve been here before. We’ll be here again. And the artists who embrace these tools while understanding their craft will be the ones creating the next 50 years of innovation.