According to Luis Carrera in an article on the website, "Revolution of Special Effects in Movies", special effects help filmmakers create on film what could not be created on screen otherwise. Although special effects have existed before movies were even invented--going back to the days of old magic shows--today's special effects have been revolutionized by the introduction of computer animated special effects. Carrera explains that animated special effects have the ability to "create people, buildings, animals, monsters, aliens, and many other creations. Our creations in the computers can come out to life with a touch of a button."
Because special effects and animation software has become so advanced, the temptation exists to go heavy on the animation and special effects in a film or video game. However, special effects animation should act as a catalyst to move the story forward in some way or another. Otherwise it just overwhelms the story.
Finally, not all animation is special effects and not all special effects uses animation. However, having animation as a tool to produce special effects have moved the industry forward exponentially.
Animation is a multifaceted discipline. For an animator trying to learn to create special effects animation, the best training is all around training. According to animation artist, Virgilio Vasconcelos in "The Secrets of Digital Animation," the biggest obstacle that some modern animators face is to focus onutside of the latest software to be learned. However, he maintains that effective animators are trained in a number of disciplines ranging from filmmaking to painting to acting. He says the across the disciplines approach works best for animators, because they must be able to adapt and grow as the art form evolves.
"Jurassic Park" was the first full length feature film to incorporate believable digitally generated characters in a live action film. In this case, the special effects (the creation of convincing dinosaurs) were pivotal in telling the story.
Special effects animation is used specifically for films like "Jurassic Park" where the object in question does not exist or the object does exist, but would be difficult to film. A good example of this is the digital animations which NASA uses to portray outer space. In the filmmaking world, according to Winthrow in "The Secrets of Digital Animation" the action and adventure and fantasy genres use effects animation the most.
Producing an animated short or feature film requiring special effects animation involves detailed planning. The requirements of films that are not animated only involve pre-production, production, and post-production. However, when 3-D animation becomes an element in the film, the production requirements become more stringent and are based upon industry standards.
The steps of a 3-D film or video are pre-production, modeling, rigging, texturing, layout and animation, lighting and shading, rendering and compositing. According to Jesse Cordtz, an Idaho based animator and Operations Manager for HieroGraphics Entertainment, the pre-production phase, particularly the storyboarding phase is the most important.
Cordtz explains this by saying that "In concept stage I'll do most of the storyboarding as soon as I know what's involved in the production. This allows me to know what to build and what not to build. For example, you don't build the back of the building if you don't need it."
The fundamental principle behind Cordtz's advice is key to successful special effects planning on a project. Because most special effects animation is so time-consuming and very often expensive, deciding early on what needs to be built or not is fundamental to creating a successful project that doesn't go over budget.
These days animation special effects have a variety of applications that have little to do with creating the next "Jurassic Park". Because of its usefulness, animation is now used in professions as diverse as the practice of law, in architecture and by organizations like NASA. More and more animators not working in traditional film and video game environments will likely be called upon to create special effects animation.
One of the best examples of the use of special effects animation outside of the filmmaking industry was the re-creation of the 1985 crash of Delta flight 191. In order to explain to a jury what transpired during the crash, a 45-minute film was created. The use of the piece changed the way the legal profession operates in terms of how evidence is presented and serves as an example, showing how the uses of special effects animation has evolved. It additionally demonstrates to some degree the direction in which special effects animation as an industry is heading.