Digital media hot in Utah

Utah's digital media experts get animated when they talk about how science and art work together to create everything from simulations to films to video and online games.

Their projects get animated as well. Digital media are among Utah's growth industries, so it was a packed house Wednesday as The Leonardo and USTAR sponsored a look at the skill sets needed to create digital media for fun and education during its "Lunch with Leo" series at the Salt Lake City Main Library.

Utah has a lot of experience with digital-media excellence, said Steve Roy of USTAR (Utah Science, Technology and Research initiative), who emceed the program. Leaders of companies including Atari, Adobe, Silicon Graphics and Pixar all have strong Utah ties or educational backgrounds. Disney/Pixar's Ed Catmull, for instance, came from the University of Utah. Brigham Young University students have in six years won nine student Emmys and four student Academy Awards. Utah State University has done many projects, including a simulation that firefighters use in training to improve their safety. And video game companies like Disney Interactive have expanded their presence in Utah.

That's just the short list.

Many of the skills that combine for extraordinary digital media results are quite basic. Craig Caldwell, media professor at the U. and a USTAR professor, lists among them photography and cinematography skills, visual arts, art history, acting and a complement of computing skills including math, physics and music. Casey Nelson, story director for Avalanche/Disney Interactive Studios, is a storyteller and visual artist, not a scientist, she said. But the storyteller's role is crucial in most video game projects. There's room for — and need of — artists and writers and math experts and more in an industry that embraces a broad range of people.

Animation projects are not cheap, in terms of either cash or skill, said Brent Adams, director of the Center for Animation at BYU. Animation for a film can cost between $1 million and $1.5 million a minute. The budgets for major video games may run as high as $80 million. Sometimes you bump into a problem that takes weeks or months to solve, as you worry about bits of the process like color and light and translation of a story board to actual models that can be animated on computer and turned into a finished product. The state of the art and the vision may not be in synch and new techniques or tools have to be developed. To prove his point, he showed various types of "fur" used for the 2,000 creatures in BYU's award-winning "Lemmings."

Digital media are also huge in edu-tainment, said Alan Hashimoto, a USU associate professor of graphic design and computer art. He uses them for everything from corporate interactive design to Poptropica, an online interactive, multi-player game and education site for kids that began two years ago and now has 30 million users.

The applications for digital media are varied. Brett Shelton, director of USU's Center for Open and Sustainable Learning, discussed the process for various projects he's been involved with, including a game that introduces people to the American West Heritage Center near Logan and a handheld version that takes visitors on a self-guided tour.

e-mail: lois@desnews.com