Over the past few months we have been producing a series of videos on the history of computer
animation.
So far we’ve covered the early experiments of John Whitney all the way through to the
success of Toy Story.
In this final video we will look at dominance of computer animated films as well as motion
capture and the rise of Flash cartoons, and take a peak what the future may have in store.
The mid to late 90s saw the dawn of the Information Age.
With web browsers making the Internet more accessible, the suffix .com became a licence
to print money.
Several e-commerce and entertainment websites were launched during this period known as
the dot-com boom.
In 1996, Futurewave Software developed Futuresplash Animator, a tool that could not only design
and animate vector graphics but allowed them to be incorporated into the web.
Futurewave was acquired by Macromedia later that year and this program was rebranded as
Flash.
Flash became one of the most widely used apps on the Internet for interactive websites,
games and of course animation.
The first significant Flash cartoon was 1997’s The Goddamn George Liquor Program by John
Kricfalusi, though as with John Lassetter in the last video, the less said about him
the better.
Other early examples include David B. Williams’ Whirlgirl, Joe Cartoon, probably best known
for Frog In a Blender, and Dice Raw’s video for the song Thin Line Between Raw and Jiggy.
Flash opened up a new world of possibilities.
It significantly cut the cost and labour of animation and offered artists the chance to
have their work seen by millions.
Websites like Newgrounds hosted user-generated content that other users could vote on, creating
a community around these cartoons.
One of the most popular artists to emerge from Newgrounds was English animator David
Firth.
Firth’s work began showing up on the website in 2004 to immediate praise, particularly
his Salad Fingers series.
Salad Fingers is a hallucinatory nightmare featuring the titular character roaming a
wasteland, rubbing himself against nettles and rusty objects.
For something a little less isolating, we have the Brothers Chaps, Mike and Matt Chapman.
They are the creators of another early Flash phenomenon, Homestar Runner.
The site was launched in early 2000 and focussed on the series namesake who would quickly be
eclipsed by rival Strong Bad with the introduction of the Strong Bad Emails.
This was a recurring segment in which Strong Bad would answer fans’ emails in an insulting
way.
Strong Bad Emails was such a hit, the Chapmans were soon able to quit their jobs and make
a living solely off of animating.
This is my favourite aspect of Flash, the idea that it allowed independent artists to
reach an audience that otherwise would have been impossible.
The popularity of this work has since lead to the animation industry accepting Flash
and many television shows have been with made on the platform.
Macromedia was acquired by Adobe in 2005 and Flash rebranded as Animate in 2016.
Animation is not natural, it’s exaggerated, expressive.
It conveys the essence of moving rather than capturing it exactly.
Since the medium’s infancy, animators have attempted to replicate human movement though
techniques like rotoscoping, which saw actors performing an action with animators later
tracing over their performance.
Motion capture began as a photogrammetric tool in the study of athletic movement.
Subjects would wear a suit with markers on their joints capable of sending signals that
could be extrapolated by computer, as technology has advanced, and mapped out as data.
The data can then be used for scientific or medical purposes as well as for entertainment.
By the late 1990s, motion capture was being used to bring characters to life in major
film productions, the first being Ahmed Best’s performance of Jar Jar Binks in Star Wars:
Episode I and soon entire films were being produced with motion capture.
Artists were n ow able to not only create fully CGI environments but exact recreations
of actors, seamlessly combining these with real-life footage.
One of the most pivotal moments in motion capture came with Andy Serkis’ performance
of Gollum in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings.
This was the first time the technique was used in real-time, with Serkis providing not
only Gollum’s voice but also acting in his place.
He has gone on to make a career out of portraying CG characters, including King Kong and Captain
Haddock in The Adventures of Tintin.
Some critics see mocap as lazy, claiming it the replaces the expressiveness and skill
of animators but Serkis sees the technology as another form of makeup.
Motion capture has advanced to the point where markers can be placed on the actor’s face
with their facial expressions mapped to their digital characters.
Actors are no longer simply lending a voice to these roles but embodying them completely.
Among the leading researchers in modern computer graphics is Paul Debevec.
His work and influence can be seen in the effects of the previous segment, particularly
the digital look-a-likes from The Matrix Trilogy.
In 2000, his team was able to capture the reflectance field over the human face, allowing
a photo-realistic reproduction.
This was achieved with the use of a light stage comprised of dozens of lights and photographs
taken from various angles and expressions.
In 2008, Debevec presented Digital Emily, a digitally constructed human face capable
of conveying realistic emotion, and Digital Ira in 2013, which could do the same only
in real-time.
With Debevec’s newest light stage, it is possible to capture and render an entire human
body as well as replicate the lighting from any setting.
Ever since the success of Toy Story, computer animation has dominated the industry and Pixar
has continued pushing the boundaries of what the medium is capable of.
Nine of their films have won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, with four among
the 50 highest-grossing films of all time.
They opened the door for other studios like Dreamworks and Illumination and today, nearly
every animated film released is created, in some part, on a computer.
Without a doubt, computers have made the animation process easier yet technology is always evolving.
Augmented and virtual reality present the possibility of total immersion and image-based
modelling has the potential to allow digital resurrections, kind of like those 90s commercials
where dead celebrities would sell you products.
Imagine Humphrey Bogart acting alongside Ryan Gosling or more personally, spending time
with a deceased loved one in an immersive photo-realistic memory.
And with this speculation of what the future may hold, we’ve come to the end of our series.
This was in never intended to be a complete or exhaustive history of computer animation.
I’m sure I’ve missed a lot but hopefully these videos have given you an overview and
maybe piqued your interest enough to pursue it further.
I will post links to relevant material in the description and if you enjoyed this video,
please give a thumbs up, subscribe if you haven’t, and check us out on Patreon, where
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I’ve been Brian Clarke, thank you so much for watching!