A few years ago we produced a series of videos on the history of computer animation.
This covered the period between the first computer-assisted animation to digital filmmaking,
roughly the early 1940s to 2018, the year that series was produced.
While it’s a good overview, there were tons we missed and so we are now back, with another
season of sorts.
A few things thought to mention first.
Full disclosure: I am into these aesthetically.
I am not a technical person.
Some information will be given on how these were made but I am not going to pretend I
understand everything.
I am not an expert and if there is something I missed or something I presented wrong or
if you have anything to add, please feel free to chime in in the comments.
Also, this is not meant to be exhaustive.
We will be looking at select pieces, not everything, so again, feel free to comment, correct, celebrate
etc.
I strongly recommend watching the original series if you haven't or revisiting it.
I certainly had to but we will have some refreshers, as we go, as needed.
This episode today overlaps with part three of that series.
We are going to be looking at computer-animated television during the period of 1970 through
1989.
Now the cost associated with producing computer animation and the technology needed or available
at the time made it so that only short subjects were possible.
So much of what we’re going to be seeing is advertising, commercials and promos, logos,
and graphics produced for television.
For many people, TV was their introduction to computer animation, whether or not it registered
or is recognized today, through Scanimate, beautiful Scanimate.
This was an analog system that allowed users to manipulate images in real-time.
A monochrome camera would capture an image which would then be displayed on a special
monitor that gave control, so the image could be warped or distorted, multiple layers and
colour could be added as well, and the result recorded either to film or video, more often
video.
In the 70s, video was still the future, the exciting new format.
Scanimate was quickly embraced by television networks due to how quickly the animations
could be created.
It could do in minutes what might take days using traditional methods.
It was developed in Denver, Colorado by Computer Image Corporation.
A lot of the work we’ve been seeing here is from them.
It was used most often for network bumpers and show intros.
Also, commercials, conventional advertising.
Studios even experimented with using Scanimate to animate cartoons.
Here we see work from Hanna-Barbera, Scooby-Doo meeting the Harlem Globetrotters.
It creates an interesting effect, for the time, definitely resembles Flash.
Jim Henson used the system to create a series of films that appeared on Sesame Street in
1970 as well.
Scanimate’s heyday was the 70s but it would be used into the 80s to eventually be replaced
by 3D modeling.
Pacific Data Images, or PDI, was founded in 1980 by Carl Rosendahl.
We were still four years away from Andre and Wally B and at that point in time, 3D computer
animation had really just been used, creatively, to produce special effects.
With PDI, Rosendahl hoped to change that and use computer animation for entertainment purposes.
Over the next two years, he partnered with Richard Chuang and Glenn Entis,
who would develop the software used by the studio and they began offering their commercial
services.
The Brazilian television network Rede Globo would become PDI’s first client,
animating logos and bumpers.
However, throughout the decade, they would gain many high-profile clients in the world
of TV.
Concurrently, they were producing graphics for all three of the major networks, ABC,
NBC and CBS, as well cable channels, Cinemax and HBO, and many others.
PDI held something of a monopoly on TV graphics during the 1980s and would use the profits
from these projects to improve their software and fund their own short films.
They also took on other commercial clients, Visa and Altos Computer Systems.
In 1989, they partnered with Jim Henson, popping here up again, to create Waldo C. Graphic,
the first computer-animated Muppet, on the Jim Henson Hour.
Waldo was basically a virtual puppet who could be animated in real-time.
Another of their clients was MTV.
There was no hotter channel in the mid-80s, at least for the youth of America, than MTV.
Music Television.
I’ve not watched in many years but they used to play music videos, creative, visual
interpretations of songs that served as a promotional tool for record companies.
Some were literal, others figurative, and many incorporated animation.
The pairing of music and animation dates back to the medium, animation’s infancy, the
bouncing ball, and other Fleischer shorts.
A lot of early animation was a vehicle for promoting music catalogs.
This tradition took a step into the future in 1985 when MTV aired the first computer-animated
music video.
This was for Dire Straits’ Money For Nothing, a song sung from the perspective of a bitter,
working-class man who complains the musicians he sees on MTV aren’t really working.
They are getting money for nothing, and chicks for free.
In the video, he and his coworker are rendered in 3D.
This is among the first examples of computer-animated people, along with Tony De Peltrie that same
year.
Money For Nothing was directed by Steve Barron, who also directed the iconic Take On Me video
and produced by Gavin Blair and Ian Pearson, who later formed Mainframe Studios, producers
of Reboot but more on them next time.
Now, the last thing we’re going to be looking at here is 1985’s Brilliance.
This may look familiar to fans of Sleepcore.
We included it in our first retrofuturism episode.
Brilliance was a 30-second ad that aired during Super Bowl XIX.
This was a year after Apple’s famous 1984 ad that helped establish high budget, extravagant
Super Bowl ads.
But this wasn’t for computers or beer or Pepsi like other iconic Super Bowl ads.
This was for cans, the Canned Food Information Council.
The intent behind this was to more or less make canned food more attractive.
Some people consider food that comes in a can lower class or quality than a meal freshly
prepared and the producers here sought to change that with an incredibly advanced commercial.
Brilliance was produced by Robert Abel and Associates, which followed a similar path
as PDI, at least at this time, producing logos and graphics for television networks and commercials.
It was possible through the use of motion capture.
The movement of a real woman was tracked and converted into data which was then used to
create the 3D model.
The story is simple: in the year 3000 a robot woman asks: what’s for dinner?
The answer is canned.
It highlights the benefits, storage time, nutrition, of canned food.
The design of the woman was influenced by the art of Hajime Sorayama,
known for illustrating sexy, female-presenting robots.
He drew his robots in pin-up or cheesecake poses and had published a book of them, Sexy
Robot, in 1983.
I find something very calming and even beautiful about CGI from this time.
Maybe it was the weather channel music it was often paired with but I find this very
relaxing.
Let me know what you think in the comments below.
I will post links to relevant material in the description as well.
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