The myth is that special effects have become the post producer’s turf, that mad scientists, circa digital, are the men in front of the keyboard.

But Jim Ruxton, the brain behind Johnny Mnemonic’s virtual fingers and the lifelike wrigglies in The Sandkings, challenges the idea that there are no more Dr. Jekylls building special effects gadgets for use in production.

Only two years out of the Ontario College of Art’s new media program, Ruxton, president of Toronto-based Cinematronics, has a resume that reads like a who’s who of every cyber/sci-fi/f/x-driven Canadian concoction to come out in the last two years.

His name never makes the on-screen credits, but Ruxton has had a hand in Robocop (Skyvision Entertainment), Screamers (Allegro Films), The Outer Limits (Atlantis Films/Lemli Productions), Shock Treatment (Alliance Productions), Cosmic City (Imax Corporation), and the recently released Johnny Mnemonic, the $20 million feature film from Alliance Communications, TriStar and Twentieth Century Fox.

It’s a different list of employers than he envisioned back in 1988 when he completed his Masters degree in electrical engineering at the University of Ottawa, Ruxton admits.

Starting out as a microwave communications engineer developing satellite communication components, the frustrated artist-at-heart began reading about the use of electronics in art. He entered the oca program in 1991, studied film and video, created various interactive sculptures on computer, and started freelancing for the local film industry designing electronics for props.

Master props builder Walter Klassen picked him up after graduation (three medals for excellence in hand) to work on effects for the first four made-for-tv TekWar films.

On set, Ruxton made the first of what would become a signature mechanism, replacing the switches and knobs used to manually control the on-set lights with small battery-powered microcontrollers, facilitating preprogrammed motor movements and light sequences in props.

‘Basically, I take chips and build peripheral electronics around them, letting the operator, whether it’s the actor or the props handler, have a level of control over the effect as it’s happening,’ he says.

Using the microcontrollers, fast-blinking lights could be slowed down and futuristic superguy Jake Cardigan could set panels alight at the sound of his voice, bleeping in sync with his inflections and eliminating the need to generate these special effects in post-production.

TekWar snowballed into work on Johnny Mnemonic.

The 2010ish sets required a light that looked glossy and high-tech in some scenes, underground cyberpunk in others.

Taking the same kind of e.l. lights used in watches and laptop computers, Ruxton hooked the thin, flat patches to small but high-voltage generators and developed controllers which would allow the props handler to speed up, slow down or change the rate of sequence of the flashing as required in each scene.

Prop lighting doesn’t have a reputation as the sexiest element of production, but there are limitless possibilities, says Ruxton.

‘Sticking a light bulb in the back of a prop or compositing on the computer after the shoot isn’t always the answer. There’s a lot of possibilities nobody’s looked at in the craft of lighting. I’m always scanning for new technology on the art side, but also tapped into this engineering network to find ways to make the effects effective on camera.’

The microcontroller concept was used differently in the filming The Sandkings (The Outer Limits pilot) where dozens of creepy latex bugs (modeled by Klassen) were programmed like little six-legged robots. The models were made with a bunch of cables inside that ran out to a box filled with tiny motors.

On the computer, Ruxton wrote programs that directed the models through a series of movements using a joystick, then downloaded the program into the motor box. Those movements could be called up on command, turning the models into ‘motorized puppets with a memory,’ says Ruxton.

The line between production and post-production special effects is evident here, but ironically, Ruxton echoes the mantra of the high-end special effects post-production gurus: anything is possible, but come talk it over as early as possible in the production.

In the meantime, the mad scientist will be in the back room, creating a new design for motion-control systems that use smpte time code readers, building a motion-capture system, fine-tuning the robot that will facilitate a virtual tour of an art gallery in Venice later this yearÉ