By Phil Williams
In the mid-1970s, Michael Hussey fell in love with the stars.
As a high school student in his hometown of Macon, he volunteered to work in the planetarium at the Museum of Arts and Sciences and almost immediately began experimenting with new ideas that sometimes delighted and sometimes baffled the management. Soon he was creating a kind of pseudo-animation, using a series of slide projectors to show moving constellations. The powers-that-be were impressed enough to hire him part-time, and soon Hussey was on track for a yet-to-b e-discovered career.
“They must have liked what I was doing because they kept me on,” says Hussey, now an assistant professor of drama and a leader in the university’s efforts in computer animation. “I had been thinking of going into art somehow, and working in the planetarium was really interesting to me.”
Despite that interest, he came very close to doing something else entirely. His parents had encouraged his artistic talent, but a high school guidance counselor hinted that art majors sometimes wind up sleeping on steam grates in New York City in the dead of winter. Wanting to have a secure career, Hussey headed for Georgia Tech, where he received a degree in mechanical engineering.
But he continued to work with the Macon museum during college, and as a senior spent some time as interim curator of the planetarium before heading off to the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center as a mechanical engineer. While that position paid well, he knew it wasn’t what he really wanted to do. He had already begun to dabble in computer animation, creating a film in 1985 using a TRS-80 computer and a stop-action 16mm camera.
“I realized then that I needed to go back to school and learn to do this, so I took the plunge and quit my job at Warner Robins,” says Hussey.
He trekked across the country, going from college to college, explaining his engineering background and trying to find someone interested in computer animation. The people with whom he spoke were not impressed by his decision to leave engineering to tackle a field that barely existed. Discouraged, he drove back to Georgia, unsure of what he might do next. Then he thought of the University of Georgia.
So he drove to Athens and had what he calls an “extraordinary” meeting with Gus Staub, then head of the drama department, who strongly encouraged Hussey to come to UGA as a student and help the department find ways to use computers in designing drama productions.
“Staub had a vision of where we could go in the future, and he knew a great deal about science and physics. I felt immediately this was where I needed to go,” says Hussey.
During his years here in graduate school, Hussey began to use newer computer equipment as it came out and specialized in directing and stage design. When the department decided in 1994 to hire an assistant professor in computer animation and design, it searched nationwide and found no one as qualified as Hussey, who signed on that year as an assistant professor.
The program in drama has become extraordinarily successful, and students can now obtain a degree in computer animation, housed in the Lamar Dodd School of Art but including course work in journalism and drama and with assistance from University Computing and Networking Services.
The program is already placing graduates in a dazzling array of high-paying industry jobs in computer animation. One former student, Chris Wells, won an Emmy Award in early September for his animation for the opening sequence of Superstructures of the World, a series that has run on the Learning Channel.
“With all the parts of this program on campus--including the School of Music, where students have composed music for some of the productions--we have formed a marvelous partnership,” says Hussey. “By combining all our resources and working well together, we have created a powerful thing here.”
One goal of the program has been to produce enough high-quality graduates that computer-animation businesses will spring up in the Atlanta area, where few have so far located. With the need for computer animation growing--in everything from feature films to commercials--the future of the degree here seems bright.
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