
Ever wondered what it’s like to be an Oscar Winner? Ask Cary Phillips Gr’91, who won his second Academy Award for technical achievement this past March. He says that while having Charlize Theron as the awards presenter lent the evening an air of glamour and glitz, the ceremony was “a minor approximation of Oscar night” where most winners formed part of “a hard-core science and engineering crowd.”
Phillips, along with several of his colleagues from the California-based company, Industrial Light & Magic, were awarded for the development of the Creature Dynamics System, a software program that uses the laws of physics to simulate the movement of clothing, skin, hair, and flesh in digital animation. Conceived in 1997 to make the clothing for Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars: Episode I “The Phantom Menace,” the program has since been used to simulate moving dinosaur muscles in Jurassic Park III, and for the special-effects animation of several other films such as Mighty Joe Young and Tomb Raider.

One dramatic example can be seen in the pod-racers scene of Star Wars: Episode I, where the characters zip past one another and collide at an impossible speed. Getting clothes, such as one fast-moving character’s cape, “to stay on and look natural is harder than you would expect.”
At any one time there might be five major motion pictures in progress at ILM, where animators and engineers work side by side to create the digital wonders of modern cinema. Phillips divides his time between designing new animation software and improving or altering pre-existing programs. He says he most enjoys the beginning of a new project, when the staff gets together to brainstorm a complex idea and “figure out just how it’s going to be done.” Recent projects at ILM include The Incredible Hulk, Harry Potter II and Star Wars: Episode II “Attack of the Clones.”
As a student, Phillips had always been interested in computer graphics and animation. While completing his doctorate in computer science at Penn, he worked on JACK, a defense-related software designed to do ergonomic analysis by simulating the human figure in a wide range of motion. He fondly recalls Dr. Norman Badler, professor of computer and information science, who he says provided him with tremendous freedom, inspiration, and hands-on experience that propelled his career in computer animation.
Phillips resides in Moss Beach, Northern California, with his wife, Denise, and their twin daughters Alexandra and Zoe. The three-and-a-half year old girls have already learned that when they go to the movies, they stay for the credits.
—Raluca Ioanid C’02