[Music]
hello and welcome back to our brief
history
of computer animation last time we saw
early computer animated television so
scanimate brilliance and the money for
nothing video
today we are continuing with a look at
cg tv from the 1990s very excited for
this
and now a quick preface we will not be
including veggietales here
as during this time it was direct to
video but we will be covering it
later this season so stay tuned
also to reiterate this is not meant to
be exhaustive i am no expert
i'm into these aesthetically so feel
free to correct
and chime in if i miss something that is
important to you
or just to view something to add so with
that
out of the way let's head back to the
90s
as we saw last time early on cgi was
used on television mainly for network
graphics
so bumpers promos that sort of thing of
course also advertising uh commercials
we looked at work from pdi pacific
data images they were an industry leader
and would continue to be
throughout the 1990s early in the decade
morphing was all the rage this was the
process of transitioning between
two images that had traditionally been
done using cross dissolve
or stop-motion techniques an algorithm
developed by thaddeus bear and sean
neely was used by pdi
to create the more natural morphs
featured in their commercial work seen
famously in a series of exxon spots and
that saw cars
transforming into tigers
pdi's clients included some of america's
most well-known brands
ford budweiser coke to name a few
they were also responsible for bringing
one of advertising's most iconic
characters
the pillsbury doughboy into the future
pillsbury was actually the first brand
to move their mascot to cg
in the early 90s previously it had been
animated with stop motion
pdi was founded with the aim of creating
entertainment using 3d computer
animation
when they weren't producing commercials
pdi staff worked on short narrative or
character animations
already i'm sure you can see progress in
terms of expressiveness
and fluidity with these characters
compared to those that appeared
just a few years earlier in 1995
pdi was contracted by the producers of
the simpsons to create a segment for
their annual trios of horror halloween
episode willa's popularity had
definitely peaked
the simpsons was arguably at its
creative best in 1995.
this was the year that gave us who shaw
mr burns mother simpson
and margema proud among many other
classic episodes and moments
but yeah homer cubed this segment found
homer wandering into a portal
that transports him into a
three-dimensional world
he accidentally tears a hole in this
dimension and his friends and family
mount a rescue effort
leading to bart's entering the dimension
just as homer
is seemingly sucked into our world it
was directed by bob anderson
with the computer animated scenes
directed by pdi's
tim johnson johnson high co-founded the
company's character animation group
uh actually he was responsible for the
pillsbury doughboy we saw earlier
unlike the doughboy who had been
rendered three-dimensionally for decades
homer cubed presented the challenge of
converting more or less
the simpsons characters from 2d to 3d
to give pdi something to work off of
homer cubed was storyboarded
just like any other episode so 2d bart's
hair
was apparently a struggle they had to
use vinyl dolls as reference
but ultimately i think they did an
amazing job adapting these characters
to 3d while staying true to the
established traits and mannerisms
for context in the larger history this
was a month or so before the release of
toy story
as we are about to see other 3d animated
characters were appearing on television
around this time but none were as
expressive as this
belgian cartoonist francois scoyten was
the son of architects
some other work clearly rubbed off on
him as can be seen in his most
well-known series
cities of the fantastic first published
in 1983
this imagined fictional civilizations
each with their own unique architecture
inspired by historic or speculative
design
in 1990 scoyne collaborated with new
media artist marie spinayun to produce
one of the first
fully computer animated tv series quarks
in this a cryptobiologist's profiles a
bizarre and invisible species
known as the quarks they vary in
appearance and ability
some look like caterpillars others are
just shapes or patterns
energies even each episode is seen from
the pov
of the cryptobiologist's detectors well
he narrates
explaining what each quirks can do be it
copying art
or moving through matter apparently
there was a planned
103-minute episodes but there were only
12 produced
between 1990 and 1993.
these would air i believe on canal plus
a french premium channel
and possibly france 3 french public
television
over in america animation was
experiencing a boom period
both theatrically the disney renaissance
and on television
through the 1990s we've covered this
pretty extensively including cartoon
network's first original series
the moxie show very little survives but
this was an anthology series
that featured classic cartoons packaged
around cg segments
starring a dog moxie and a flea flea
now the casting here is wild moxie is
voiced by bobcat golthwaite
and at different times both penn
gillette and chris rock voicefully
moxie was brought to life thanks to
motion capture technology
and has the unique honor of being the
first cartoon
to air quote unquote live thanks to
appearing during the great international
tune
in this was a massive marathon that
spanned three turner networks in america
so tbs tnt and cartoon network as well
as three other international affiliates
in latin america and europe overall i
believe it was something like 55
countries
uh tuned in on november 26 1993
uh this was the world's introduction to
moxie with a puppeteer providing body
movements
a technician manipulating facial
expressions and
bobcat interacting with children all in
real time
the moxie show debuted the following
december and ran until 1995
but was not well preserved or preserved
at all and has not aired
since 1996.
last time we saw the video for dire
straits money for nothing which featured
animation produced by gavin blair and
ian pearson
who also created animation for def
leppard's let's get rocked
in 1992 the previous year
they along with christopher bro phil
mitchell and john grace had formed what
is today
known as mainframe studios in vancouver
this was obviously set up to create 3d
computer animation
their first major project reboot was a
massive undertaking
we have seen what came before it and to
produce a full series
animated with computers just wasn't
possible and not with the technology
available when the idea was first
thought of
reboot's roots date back to 1984 when it
was conceived by blair
mitchell pearson and grace then known
collectively as the hub
it was in development for many years but
in the early 90s the tech had begun to
catch up
with their ambitions this is still
before toy story
and there wasn't anything they could
really point to and say
to a tv exec or networks that you know
the show was going to be like blank
there just wasn't anything like this
before the setting and themes
would become an extension of the concept
it was made with computers
and so it took place inside them as well
presenting it as such
not only covered some of the animation
limitations uh simple backgrounds and
clunky movements
but also helped people adjust to these
new aesthetics
reboot was the product of the
information age the internet
and computers even were still new to
many people this is what the internet
looked like around that time
but still the possibilities felt endless
episode plots would revolve around bob
enzo and dot
protecting the computer system city
mainframe from the villains viruses
megabyte and hexadecimal
it premiered on abc in the us and cable
network
ytv here in canada in september 1994
and would run into the new millennium
november
2001. mainframe studios
followed reboot with beast wars a sequel
to transformers
the wildly popular cartoon and toy line
from the 1980s
the original transformers series as well
as the toy line had recently been
repackaged in 1992
as transformers generation 2 or g2
worth mentioning because the only new
animation in the g2 animated series
was the inclusion of some cgi used in
the opening
and scene transitions but this was
largely abandoned
with the arrival of beast wars debuting
in 1996
beast wars took place in the future of
the transformers universe
with the descendants of the good
autobots here known as the maximals
continuing their battle against the evil
decepticons
now the predacons rather than vehicles
the robots turn into
different animals obviously beast wars
this ran
until 1999 and spawned its own sequel
beast machines running from that year
only through
2000 canadian studio novana
should be familiar to most animation
fans dating all the way back to the 70s
with their work on the star wars holiday
special to babar
beetlejuice clone high which came a
little after this period
novana has produced a ton of shows in
the late 90s
they ventured into cgi with roly polioli
and donkey kong country donkey kong
country
dkc was based off of the popular video
game of the same name
that reimagined the classic video game
character
donkey kong placing him in a new setting
genre
and surrounding him with new characters
friends and family
as a fun aside the game donkey kong
country is notable for being one of the
first
to include pre-rendered graphics this
allowed the developers to present
detailed 3d images on technology that
ordinarily would not be able to produce
such images perhaps this is why it was
chosen
rather than more familiar nintendo
properties like mario to be adapted into
a computer animated series
this show was a co-production between
elvana
media lab studio la out of france
and the taiwanese american studio hong
kong
as such it had a complicated release
schedule it was first debuted in france
on france 2
in 1996 the french version premiered
in canada on teletune in september 97
with the english version coming there
the following month
americans would get it on various fox
networks in 1998
um being based on a japanese property it
also aired
there in 1999 i'll actually link the
theme in the description
uh it's a banger check it out there are
a lot of mixed feelings
around this show personally i have a ton
of nostalgia for it
but see where a lot of the criticism
comes from the aesthetics aren't for
everyone
gamers are not the easiest audience to
please and it tried to do a lot with new
technology
what is unique about dkc is it is the
first fully cg show
to be produced with mocap which may
explain some of the jilted movement
now most of what we have looked at here
has almost been exclusively geared
towards children
there were some computer animated shows
geared towards adults
made during this time south park of
course which we have a whole video on
that was produced using computers there
was also
ceta's world ceta was a cgvj
who would introduce music videos during
a 60-minute block on b-e-t
in between the videos cedar would riff
on current events and
answer requests or viewer mail talk
about her personal life
uh dating that sort of thing like moxie
sita was created using motion capture
with kelly troy
also known as kitty kaboom providing her
voice
sida's world was directed by corey
turner and written by tracy z
zinzer as far as i've been able to find
the animation
was produced by a company called mirage
quest
media and this ran from 1999
to 2003 this period
was the last where computer animation
would be treated as novel
after this it just became industry
standard which we will look at more
next time that's it for today i know
there was a ton i missed so again
please feel free to comment down below
if there was something you wish i
included
or if you have a correction i always
welcome being corrected
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