Thornton Academy Postscripts Alumni Magazine Spring 2010 | Page 15

Benjamin Perkins ’98 brings
“Alice in Wonderland” to life in 3-D
As a young boy, Ben Perkins ’98
enjoyed drawing monster trucks,
hot rods, military jets – and Disney characters. So he was thrilled
to help perfect the 3-D version of
Disney’s recently released movie
“Alice in Wonderland.”
Perkins worked at Sony Imageworks in Culver City, California on
the project. It was his second job
on a feature film; last year, he did
similar 3-D imaging work for “GForce,” a film about crime-fighting
guinea pigs.
“Alice in Wonderland” grossed
$116.3 million in its first weekend,
and following the success of “Avatar,” it’s poised to be another big
3-D and IMAX hit.
Perkins worked on 60 scenes
in the film. The job involved taking
raw live action video shot against
a green screen and integrating it
with computer-generated (CG) animation video. He also works on
adjusting lighting and textures so
each scene looks seamless.
“I like knowing that the general
public really enjoys the escapism
of these films because it’s certainly
something I enjoy,” Perkins said. “I
personally like the 3-D experience
when it’s done well. I think the
third dimension is part of the reason why I decided to get into CG.
I liked the fact that I could move
around in whatever I was creating in the computer as opposed to
the single view that there is with a
piece of paper.”
Getting all the details together
in a single frame is time consuming and labor intensive, Perkins

explains.
While
he worked on
the film for four
months, he became accustomed
to working 10-12
hours a day, six
to seven days a
week.
Benjamin Perkins ‘98
He would often work on three
or four shots at a time and have 1-3
days to complete them. Once those
shots were working pretty well in 3-D,
he’d go into a small theater – called a
“sweat box” – and put on glasses to
review with his superiors. Once approved, it’s a waiting game while the
final high-resolution renderings of
each scene are compiled. From there
the scenes were submitted to Ken
Ralston, the visual effects supervisor
for the movie who has won four Oscars, who shared them with Director
Tim Burton.
“Everyone was just trying to get
the best quality, the best effects and
the most coherent look to the film so
it pleases the audience and meets the
director’s vision,” Perkins says.
He credits Thornton Academy for
providing him and other alumni with
a great place to begin exploring the
arts, giving him a foundation for his
later work.
“I remember taking classes with
Jennifer Merry and David Hanright,”
he says. “I knew when I was going
through Thornton that we had a really good art program. They had just
finished the expansion of the theater
and that whole wing. With such a
larger space, it really gave students

the ability to take lots of different
types of classes.”
Merry remembers Perkins as
being a kind, witty and generous
person in her art classes back when
he was at Thornton. “As a TA artist,
Ben always stretched his ideas and
talent, unafraid to fail and start
over,” she said.
His high school experiences allowed Perkins to work in mediums
like painting, watercolor and even
clay. He went on to attend Syracuse
University and received his bachelor’s degree in fine arts with an emphasis on illustration. He was later
hired to do hand-drawn animation
on smaller projects like commercials and web sites at a company
called Animotion Inc. in Syracuse.
He learned what a long process it
was to do hand-drawn work, which
led him to eventually trade in pencil and paper for sophisticated
computer programs.
There was a lot of excitement
around movies like “Matrix” and
“The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy
at the time, Perkins explains, and
this was another factor that led him
to want