IEEE Spectrum February, 2011 - 39

e xc lus i v e o n l i n e
online exclusive
f e at u r e

Putting a Face
on Fantasy
m a r k saga r give s expr e ssion
to the mov ie face s th at
delight, ter r ify, a nd
enthr a ll us
MARK SAGAR makes faces for major
motion pictures. beautiful, shocking,
unforgettable faces: giant ape faces, blue
alien faces, and wizened middle-earth faces.
it's probably the tenor of the times, but
increasingly moviegoers want to escape
into strange and fantastic realms. However,
even in these weird worlds, the traditional
rules of cinema apply. So no matter how
odd the creatures, their faces still have to
do what actors have done for centuries: use
expression to feed emotion to an audience
hungry for it. it's a growth industry. And
nobody does faces as well as Sagar, and no
company does exotic alien worlds better
than his employer, Weta Digital.
A decade ago, Sagar worked on technology that enabled technicians to capture
images of an actor's face, expressions, and
movement in such a way that those images
could be inserted convincingly into any
scene, either real or digitally created. that
work led to a collaboration that produced
Light Stage, a hardware-and-software
system that won Sagar and three others an
Academy Award in 2010.
Now, at Weta, Sagar is developing stateof-the-art software to give expression to
the faces of digitally created creatures.
Weta, which set the bar for cine-creatures
in Avatar, is expected to up the ante in
animation with its upcoming feature

amir abo
shaeer

i

age 38
what he does Teaches
for whom Dos
Pueblos High School
where he does it
Goleta, Calif.
fun factors Often travels
with his students to thrillpacked robot competitions.
Photo: GreGG seGAL

convinced that helping
others to learn would pay
off in the end. It didn't
hurt that his Iraqi-born
father had transformed
spectrum.ieee.org

himself in an even more
drastic fashion, from a
Ph.D. physics professor
to a landscaper, after
moving to the United States
following Amir's birth.
Growing up in Southern
California, Abo-Shaeer
liked to tinker, but his
household was one of
modest means. "We had a
drill and a saw; that was
pretty much it," he says.
During his senior year at
the University of California,
Santa Barbara, where he
majored in physics, AboShaeer took a lab course
that introduced him to a

mark sagar
age 44
what he does Creates effects for
huge-budget motion pictures.
for whom Weta Digital
where he does it New Zealand,
Southern California
fun factors Does cutting-edge research
with the most advanced equipment and
computing platforms available; meets A-list
Hollywood stars and puts dots on their faces.
PHOTO: DEAN CARRUTHERS/THE UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND

Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. for the
whole story on Sagar's career sojourn, from
the university of Auckland to the Academy
Awards podium, see http://spectrum.ieee.
org/sagar0211.
-Glenn Zorpette

machine shop. "It was like
I was in heaven," he recalls.
That year he entered a
school competition to build
a solar water heater. He
won, hands down. One of
his physics professors took
notice and hired Abo-Shaeer
as a lab assistant. He relished
the opportunity, because by
that point, he had decided
to pursue mechanical
engineering in graduate
school and was seeking
more hands-on experience.
While in grad school,
also at UCSB, Abo-Shaeer
began working for a small
aerospace company. He

decided to end his education
with a master's degree. But
he was laid off from his
job after a year and a half,
which led him to a dreary
position at a telephoneproducts company. "It was
kind of sucking my soul
dry," he says. Looking
back, though, he views that
stultifying experience as
the best thing that could
have happened to him,
because that was when he
decided to go into teaching.
around that time, Dos
Pueblos High School had
received funding from the

fEbruAry 2011 * iEEE SpEctrum * NA

39
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum February, 2011
