Digital Job Is His Ticket From ‘Paradise’

In one of the more memorable scenes in the teen flick “The Craft,” a swarm of monarch butterflies descends upon four young girls who are dabbling in witchcraft. The butterflies flit about, and if viewers look carefully, they might notice the butterflies’ shadows on nearby trees and the girls. It all looks natural, but in fact Sony Pictures Imageworks created the winged monarchs in a personal computer by way of the latest in digitally generated imaging. It’s the handiwork of David J. Schaub, a lead digital artist at Imageworks, who oversaw creation of the 23-second sequence that took nearly four months to complete.

Schaub, 36, is relatively new to Hollywood. He joined Imageworks in July 1995 after nearly a dozen years as an engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co. in El Segundo. He wasn’t among the legions of downsized aerospace employees: He worked in one of Hughes’ growth sectors, designing sensors that keep track of satellite positions. But Schaub, who has played classical guitar and made short films as hobbies since he was a teenager in Europe, hungered for greater personal expression.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of room to be creative,” he says. “I had to find a way out of aerospace.”

Schaub established a side business producing and selling instructional videotapes for the guitar. He also developed a new position for himself at Hughes that allowed him to use his self-taught skills to create computer-generated, three-dimensional animations of Hughes technology. The images were used in company sales pitches.

It wasn’t until Schaub signed up for a UCLA Extension class with a growing reputation as a place to be discovered in Hollywood that his new career direction took hold.

During a 12-week workshop in which students produced computer-generated short films, Schaub created “Paradise,” a 40-second mood piece depicting a jungle waterfall, a gently rippling pool and tropical fish. The soundtrack was an original acoustic guitar composition by Schaub.

At a final class field trip, the students showed their films to executives from Sony Pictures Imageworks. Schaub’s project dazzled Frank Foster, the company’s vice president of multimedia. He offered Schaub a job on the spot. “It’s one of the few times that’s happened,” Foster said.

Hollywood is hungering for people with Schaub’s combination of artistic and computer skills. Major studios and special-effects houses compete feverishly for the limited supply of talent, offering starting salaries of $50,000 to $75,000 for artists with limited experience.

Schaub says his workday is much more frantic than at the relatively sedate Hughes. He now stays at the office nine to 11 hours a day, tackles lots of work at home and copes with constant deadline pressure.

“Where I came from, I knew every day what to expect,” he says. “Here, it’s truly a roller coaster. You’re up one day, down the next. This is a very dynamic business.”