For us fantasy lovers, CGI is a Godsend. Sure, reading fantasy books is wonderful. But when it came to the big screen, bringing strange worlds, creatures and characters to life was harder for our genre than most. CGI was first used in 1973 for the scientific movie Westworld, and then for its sequel, Futureworld, in 1976. Where things really start to pick up for CGI, however, was in 1979, for a movie that you perhaps heard of: Star Wars. It wasn’t until 1993, however, when CGI was inserted into movies on a much larger scale in the movie Jurassic Park. It was at this point that stop-motion animation started to fall to the wayside. It would only be two years later when the first fully computer-generated movie would hit the theaters, going by the name of Toy Story. And by the early 2000’s, CGI would become the biggest player in movie special effects. Now, thanks to all these developments, we can go to the theaters and see the scenes from our favorite fantasy books come off the pages to entertain us.
The buck doesn’t stop here, though. One day, I fully expect to be walking around inside a movie as an active participant as its playing out.
