While I was double-checking facts for the Seventies advertising post a couple days ago, I discovered this useful resource—A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation created by professor Wayne Carlson. The site is more overview than in-depth examination, but it does appear to be fairly thorough and is packed with rare video clips and stills of early CG work. While it’s easy to criticize computer animation for everything that it lacks, a site like this is a reminder of how young the technique is and how quickly it has developed. It’s certainly humbling to watch this early CG experiment (streaming RealPlayer file) by Ed Catmull and to think that just a few decades later his studio is producing Ratatouille.

An independent director (who asked to remain nameless, but often works for Disney), did these sequences a few years ago for an overseas theme park project. The show was an homage to classic movies, tied together by a running gag of a stray balloon that gets loose. The director added the balloon using After Effects and did an amazing job matching each film’s cinematic style. The balloon subplot was eliminated from the project, but the director has now posted a bunch of his test clips on YouTube.

Balloon Part 1 (Safety Last)

Balloon Part 2 (Casablanca 1)

Balloon Part 3 (Butch Cassidy)

Balloon Part 4 (North By Northwest)

Balloon Part 5 (Star Wars)

Balloon Part 6 (Casablanca 2)

Balloon Part 7 (La Femme Nikita)

Balloon Part 8 (Singin’ In The Rain)

Balloon Part 9 (Wizard of Oz)

Balloon Part 10 (French Connection)

Balloon Part 11 (Mary Poppins)

Balloon Part 19 (Lord of the Rings)

About the film project they were from, the director himself says:

“The main through line was a romance between a guy in the audience and a woman in the movie. The “every man” goes into the movie (right through the screen) and meets a beautiful woman there. There is a spark of romance. He is then chased by villains out of her movie and stumbles through many other classic films, lost and alone. The woman leaves her movie to go on a quest to find him.

“So — now you’re probably wondering where the balloon shots come in. Well they don’t. Not in the final show. However, just before we committed to film the project, we decided to go through a kind of wild card period. Float some totally different ideas. I thought it might be fun to do a nod to “The Red Balloon”. I did a few of these balloon shots at home and took them into the studio. Everybody enjoyed them. So we explored a possible version centered on that idea. I did more and more shots, took them in, hunkered down with the editor and stitched together a draft. We all got a kick out of it, but utimately decided that we missed the romantic comedy of Plan A. So after the diversion, we returned to our original course.

“So I had all these shots at home that I’d done on spec. I figured that since I did them and they contain no material from the studio, and I don’t reference the context we used when toying with them, they’re safe to post.”

UPDATE: For all you Balloonaholics, here is an 18-part, six and a half minute compilation of the Balloon Movies:

Helium and Celluloid

Good Grief! Some drawn characters just shouldn’t be rendered in 3-D.

A German telecommunications company, Combots, is selling animated icons based on popular animation and comics characters. These Peanuts ones are pretty hideous.

However, there are some characters that could (and do) work. I suppose it’s all based on design. Check out some of the others, particularly these Spongebob icons, which look pretty good. It’ll be interesting to see how they handle the Looney Tunes characters, which they’ve apparently licensed.

UPDATE: Little wonder the Spongebob icons look so good. They were done by the talented crew at Studio Soi. Soi also created the Zodies series and the “Tom and Lily” site tutorials (click on ‘trailer’ on the homepage to watch the six episodes).

Here’s the latest trailer for Pixar’s Ratatouille with a lot of new footage that I haven’t seen anywhere else before.

(Thanks, John)

I’ll probably regret posting this in a few hours but the animation at Technicolon.com is some of the most trippy (innovative?, annoying?) CG I’ve seen in a while. Take heed of the warning at the front of the site: “PLEASE DO NOT WATCH THESE CARTOONS IF YOU SUFFER FROM PHOTOSENSITIVE EPILEPSY (PSE).”

[Note: The manifesto has been removed at the request of the filmmaker. He says it wasn't really intended to ever be put up on the site, so just enjoy the cartoons for what they are.]

(Thanks, Nathan Barley)

In case you missed it this morning, here’s the segment on Brad Bird from ABC News. Lots of nice clips from Ratatouille. Also, after the segment on Bird, there is an interview with production designer Rick Heinrichs (Frankenweenie, Vincent, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure).

Click here to see the large size version of this promotional image, above, from Foodfight.

Can you spot the product placement? Foodfight is now scheduled for theatrical release this fall from Lions Gate Films (the same people who brought us Happily N’ever After). It’s a great idea for a film: after midnight all the packages in a local food store come alive, with the goodguy characters (including Mr. Clean, Cap’n Crunch, Charlie the Tuna, the Engergizer Bunny, et al) taking on a villainous band of Brand X characters for control of supermarket aisles. Of course this plot harkens back to several Merrie Melodies of yore (September In The Rain (1937), Goofy Groceries (1941), etc.). So far so good.

However, the real trouble begins with a visit to the Foodfight website. The character designs look awful. B-list celebrities are doing the voices. The film’s partners (read: producers) include Proctor and Gamble, Del Monte and Tootsie Roll, among others. We already get enough commercials at the movies as it is. I don’t know about you, but I predict a short shelf life for this flick.

Earlier coverage of Foodfight on Cartoon Brew here.

This one’s even better.

Click here to see the new Seinfeld Bee Movie trailer with Steven Spielberg - and some actual animation.