Bruin alumni dominate DreamWorks Interactive
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 9, 2002 9:00 p.m.
 eagames.com Six UCLA film school alumni are in charge of
animation in the video game series "Medal of Honor: Frontline."
By Robert Esposito
Daily Bruin Contributor
The UCLA School of Theater Film and Television is known to admit
only the most talented and promising students into its program.
It is no wonder, then, that six film school alumni are in charge
of the computer animation in the third and newest installment of
Steven Spielberg’s high profile World War II video game
series, “Medal of Honor: Frontline.”
Sunil Thankamushy, the lead animator of “Frontline,”
along with animators Neil Ishimine, David Kury, Ken Angliongto,
Kevin Scharff and modeler Scott Eaton all graduated from either the
Animation Workshop or the film program at UCLA. Some were even
hired out of the program before they had a chance to graduate.
“I’d like to think that the reason we are all here
together is because these guys rocked,” said Thankamushy.
“What they brought from the UCLA film program was far
superior than anything that this company has seen.”
This company happens to be DreamWorks Interactive, founded by
Steven Spielberg in 1995 as a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. After
a few installments of “Jurassic Park” inspired games,
Spielberg decided to make a game that would feed the
country’s resurging interest in WWII. The game was titled
“Medal of Honor” and was finished concurrently with the
release of “Saving Private Ryan” in 1999.
“Medal of Honor” was so well received that the
Congressional Medal of Honor Society became partners with the
series, allowing its prestigious seal to adorn the back of the game
box in exchange for a specialized Web site managed by
DreamWorks.
“Medal of Honor’s” most touted strength was
its faithfulness to Spielberg’s intense attention to
detail. Now able to take advantage of the Playstation
2’s power, the animation team for “Frontline”
hopes to introduce a new level of authenticity and military
accuracy.
Preparation for the original game included trips to Europe and
countless museums, pouring over thousands of photographs and taking
new photographs of locations to be painstakingly reanimated in the
game. Such research continued this time around.
“Most of the research of the game was going through books
and photographs to get the authentic uniforms for all the
characters in the game, and talking to veterans on how the uniforms
would be worn,” said Scott Eaton.
Most importantly, according to Thankamushy, was the input of
Captain Dale Dye, who has collaborated in movies such as
“Platoon,” “Born on the Fourth of July,”
“Forrest Gump,” “Mission Impossible,”
“JFK” and, most recently, “Saving Private
Ryan.”
Of course the new game had even bigger shoes to fill, and Dye
resorted to boot camp to inspire the animators.
“He took us out to train us in the art and science of
using weapons,” said Thankamushy. “We were out in the
desert all day learning how to fire weapons. Then he took us
paintballing, in which he split us into four squadrons ““ all
in military style based on his tactical training.”
Also, the team focused a lot more on weapons this time around.
The team took weapons out of an armory in Hollywood and recorded
each gun’s unique sound. Using authentic weapon sounds is a
markedly film-like quality to provide a step above the average
tactical combat game.
“We took the exact weapons out and fired them and recorded
the sound for each weapon, how the weapon sounded when it was being
carried, how it sounded when it was being reloaded,” Scott
Eaton said.
As a modeler, Eaton was in charge of designing each weapon that
is used in the game. In addition to recording each gun’s
sound, Eaton and the other modelers took pictures of the guns and
learned how they were reloaded.
The Playstation 2 (PS2) clearly excited all of the animators and
gave them much more freedom than in the previous game.
“Taking advantage of the technology, everything is on a
much grander scale both in terms of quality and quantity,”
said Kevin Scharff. “The limit for PS1 was there could only
be three non-player characters on the screen at a time, and
we’re significantly pushing that to 15 characters. In
addition all the characters have a lot more detail.”
The biggest job of the animators is to design and draw life-like
characters and environments.
“One of the things we were able to do this time around is
have facial animation and lip-sync so that when the characters talk
to you, you will see their mouths moving and their eyes
blinking,” said animator Dave Kury.
Most of these graphical goodies were made possible by increasing
the level of polygons in the game. Polygons are small triangles
that make up the surface of an object in the game.
“In the first game our polygon count (level of detail) was
250 polygons, and in the new game, there are 250 polygons in a
character’s hand itself. With gear and everything, each
character is about 2800 polygons,” said Thankamushy.
About his education, Indian-born Thankamushy was very
impassioned. “I came to this country to go to school at UCLA,
and without having gone through the Animation Workshop, there is no
way I would have gotten into the industry the way I did.”
The animators mentioned how the beauty of UCLA is the weight and
strength of its name.
“Most of us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for
UCLA; not just for the education, but it enabled us to really build
a network and we all wound up here because each of us knew at least
one other of us in this room and it served as a good foundation for
us to begin our careers,” said Kevin Scharff.
Each of the staff members had in fact made at least three films
before they were hired for “Frontline.” The film school
allowed them to use whatever medium they felt comfortable with,
from computers to hand puppets.
“The philosophy of the animation program is that it
prepares the student not for the first job but for the last job,
like a director. All of us got spectacular training in the whole
gamut of the production ““ conceiving an idea, creating it,
executing it, and then exhibiting it,” said Thankamushy.
