The Making of Pencil Test The Making of Pencil Test

With SIGGRAPH 2007 now wrapped up, I thought it might be appropriate to link to the video below about a CG animated short that debuted nearly twenty years ago at SIGGRAPH 88. The film, Pencil Test (watch it here), was created in-house at Apple Computer to display the capabilities of the Apple Macintosh II. The film below is the ‘making of’ that explains how they did it. Interestingly enough, Andrew Stanton (director of Finding Nemo and the upcoming Wall-E) receives a credit on the finished film as illustrator and storyteller, and John Lasseter has a credit as “coach.” And one more cool note: the applications engineer who appears in the short, Nancy Tague, is now Mrs. Nancy Lasseter.

UPDATE: A Brew reader who prefers to remain anonymous writes, “The woman building the character is Galyn Susman, producer of Ratatouille. She’s really awesome, and has been at Pixar since before Toy Story.”

(Thanks, John Karel)

Amid Amidi

Amid Amidi is Cartoon Brew's Publisher and Editor-at-large.

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