Think of the animation possibilities…

(via Animation Anomaly)

Anyone interested in the history of computer animation and the roots of Pixar is in for a treat. Headlining this post is a forty-year-old video created by Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull and classmate Fred Parke at the University of Utah. The animation of the hand, which is among the earliest examples of rendered 3D animation, was reused in the 1976 feature Futureworld. It was the first use of computer modeled animation in a feature film. The backstory of who had a copy of the entire film and why it’s posted on Vimeo is also fascinating and worth a read.

Next up is Vol Libre by Loren Carpenter. The film is considered a classic of early computer graphics and caused a huge stir when it debuted at SIGGRAPH in 1980. In fact, Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith walked up to Carpenter after the screening and offered him a job on the spot in George Lucas’s Computer Division, which eventually became Pixar. Carpenter has been with the studio ever since. Here’s what he wrote about Vol Libre in the video description on Vimeo:

I made this film in 1979-80 to accompany a SIGGRAPH paper on how to synthesize fractal geometry with a computer. It is the world’s first fractal movie. It utilizes 8-10 different fractal generating algorithms. I used an antialiased version of this software to create the fractal planet in the Genesis Sequence of Star Trek 2, the Wrath of Khan. These frames were computed on a VAX-11/780 at about 20-40 minutes each.

I didn’t interview Catmull or Carpenter when I wrote The Art of Pixar Short Films, but I did speak to three of their colleagues on the technology side—Alvy Ray Smith, Eben Ostby and Bill Reeves. Of the hundreds of interviews I’ve conducted over the years, I’ll admit that these were the only times I’d ever felt intimidated. These folks are brilliant minds who are smarter than I could ever hope to be. I have a layman’s understanding of how computer animation works, but I can’t pretend to grasp the nuances of how they write code that translates ones and zeros into fantastic computer animated imagery. I’d be willing to wager that very few of the artists who work in computer animation have any clue either. The technology is taken for granted; we simply accept that these programs enable the creation of wonderful images.

The software didn’t exist four decades ago though. Watching these early pieces of computer animation only heightens my sense of awe and admiration for the scientists and technologists who have made computer animation possible. In a mere blip of time, they’ve built the technological platform that makes possible every one of today’s computer-animated and effects-laden films. Not to mention that their discoveries have led to the development of entirely new forms of entertainment like video games. They are some very smart people indeed.

(Thanks, Brian Hoary, for the Ed Catmull link)

Trailer for Alois Nebel, a new Czech animated feature directed by Tomáš Luňák. It debuts this month at the Venice Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, and opens soon afterward in the Czech Republic. The story looks engaging which is good because the graphic style that stems from the Waking Life school of floaty rotoscope doesn’t excite me at all. They combined the roto with a black-and-white palette, which has been a trendy look in recent indie animated features like Renaissance, Persepolis, Fear(s) of the Dark, and the semi-b&w Mary and Max. No word on international release dates, but stay tuned to the official website AloisNebel.cz.

Film synopsis if you want to know more:

The end of the eighties in the twentieth century. Alois Nebel works as a dispatcher at the small railway station on the Czech-Polish border. He’s a loner, who prefers old timetables to people, and he finds the loneliness of the station tranquil – except when the fog rolls in. Then he hallucinates, sees trains from the last hundred years pass through the station. They bring ghosts and shadows from the dark past of Central Europe.

The feature film Alois Nebel is an adaptation of the graphic novel by Jaroslav Rudiš and Jaromír 99 combining animation and live-action. The authors have chosen rotoscoping as the visual approach for the film in order to remain true to the style of the original comic book.

(Thanks to Tom for pointing out the story on Twitch)

Lots of buzz yesterday over the announcement of Wacom’s new Inkling device. It allows users to sketch directly onto paper using a real pen, and records the strokes, which can then be exported to the computer as a vector file. The consensus amongst various professional artists posting on Twitter appears to be, “Wow, this is a cool gadget, but I’m not sure how it fits into my workflow.” On the plus side, it’s priced at $200 which is a relatively affordable cost of entry for a new technology. Are you excited about the Inkling? Can you envision using it in your film production workflow?

Watch this intro to the Inkling:

Eighty-one-year old Fred Cohen, owner of Poughkeepsie’s Overlook Drive-In movie theater, is either clairvoyant or a crotchety old man. He offered his assessment of 3-D movies in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal and it ain’t pretty:

“I’ve been in this business long enough to see it fail once. And I’ll be in it long enough to see it fail again.”

The jury is still out on how much longer Fred will have to wait.

Despite getting food poisoning the last time I ate at Chipotle, they remain among my favorite fast food joints (along with my other fave, In-N-Out). One of the reasons I like Chipotle is their emphasis on humanely raised animals. Whether raising meat can ever be as idyllic or beautiful as depicted in this new stop motion short called Back to the Start is open to debate, but it’s an undeniably attractive piece of advertising. It was directed by designed by London-based Johnny Kelly whose hand-made approach to the art form is a perfect match for Chipotle’s message. Like George Pal’s Puppetoons, Kelly knows how to animate stylized geometric forms with organic appeal.

Behind-the-scenes production photos on Johnny Kelly’s Flickr account.

Making of video and credits after the jump:
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