History of computer animation

The history of computer animation began as early as the 1940s and 1950s, when people began to experiment with computer graphics – most notably by John Whitney. It was only by the early 1960s when digital computers had become widely established, that new avenues for innovative computer graphics blossomed. Initially, uses were mainly for scientific, engineering and other research purposes, but artistic experimentation began to make its appearance by the mid-1960s – most notably by Dr Thomas Calvert. By the mid-1970s, many such efforts were beginning to enter into public media. Much computer graphics at this time involved 2-dimensional imagery, though increasingly as computer power improved, efforts to achieve 3-dimensional realism became the emphasis. By the late 1980s, photo-realistic 3D was beginning to appear in film movies, and by mid-1990s had developed to the point where 3D animation could be used for entire feature film production.

The earliest pioneers: 1940s to mid-1960s

John Whitney

John Whitney, Sr (1917–1995) was an American animator, composer and inventor, widely considered to be one of the fathers of computer animation. In the 1940s and 1950s, he and his brother James created a series of experimental films made with a custom-built device based on old anti-aircraft analog computers (Kerrison Predictors) connected by servos to control the motion of lights and lit objects – the first example of motion control photography. One of Whitney's best known works from this early period was the animated title sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film ''Vertigo'', which he collaborated on with graphic designer Saul Bass. In 1960, Whitney established his company Motion Graphics Inc, which largely focused on producing titles for film and television, while continuing further experimental works. In 1968, his pioneering motion control model photography was used on Stanley Kubrick's film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'', and also for the slit-scan photography technique used in the film's "Star Gate" finale.

The first digital image

One of the first programmable digital computers was SEAC (the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer), which entered service in 1950 at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in Maryland, USA. In 1957, computer pioneer Russell Kirsch and his team unveiled a drum scanner for SEAC, to "trace variations of intensity over the surfaces of photographs", and so doing made the first digital image by scanning a photograph. The image, picturing Kirsch's three-month-old son, consisted of just 176×176 pixels. They used the computer to extract line drawings, count objects, recognize types of characters and display digital images on an oscilloscope screen. This breakthrough can be seen as the forerunner of all subsequent computer imaging, and recognising the importance of this first digital photograph, Life magazine in 2003 credited this image as one of the "100 Photographs That Changed the World".

:From the late 1950s and early 1960s, mainframe digital computers were becoming commonplace within large organisations and universities, and increasingly these would be equipped with graphic plotting and graphics screen devices. Consequently, a new field of experimentation began to open up.

The first computer-drawn film

In 1960, a 49-second vector animation of a car traveling down a planned highway was created at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology on the BESK computer. The consulting firm Nordisk ADB, which was a provider of software for the Royal Swedish Road and Water Construction Agency realized that they had all the coordinates to be able to draw perspective from the driver's seat for a motorway from Stockholm towards Nacka. In front of a specially designed digital oscilloscope with a resolution of about 1 megapixel a 35 mm camera with an extended magazine was mounted on a specially made stand. The camera was automatically controlled by the computer, which sent a signal to the camera when a new image was fed on the oscilloscope. It took an image every twenty meters (yards) of the virtual path. The result of this was a fictional journey on the virtual highway at a speed of 110 km/h (70 mph). The short animation was broadcast on November 9, 1961, at primetime in the national television newscast Aktuellt.

Bell Labs

Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, was a leading research contributor in computer graphics, computer animation and electronic music from its beginnings in the early 1960s. Initially, researchers were interested in what the computer could be made to do, but the results of the visual work produced by the computer during this period established people like Edward Zajac, Michael Noll and Ken Knowlton as pioneering computer artists.

Edward Zajac produced one of the first computer generated films at Bell Labs in 1963, titled ''A Two Gyro Gravity Gradient attitude control System'', which demonstrated that a satellite could be stabilized to always have a side facing the Earth as it orbited.

Ken Knowlton developed the Beflix (Bell Flicks) animation system in 1963, which was used to produce dozens of artistic films by artists Stan VanDerBeek, Knowlton and Lillian Schwartz. Instead of raw programming, Beflix worked using simple "graphic primitives", like draw a line, copy a region, fill an area, zoom an area, and the like.

In 1965, Michael Noll created computer-generated stereographic 3D movies, including a ballet of stick figures moving on a stage. Some movies also showed four-dimensional hyper-objects projected to three dimensions. Around 1967, Noll used the 4D animation technique to produce computer animated title sequences for the commercial film short ''Incredible Machine'' (produced by Bell Labs) and the TV special ''The Unexplained'' (produced by Walt DeFaria). Many projects in other fields were also undertaken at this time.

Boeing-Wichita

In the 1960s, William Fetter was a graphic designer for Boeing at Wichita, and was credited with coining the phrase "Computer Graphics" to describe what he was doing at Boeing at the time (though Fetter himself credited this to colleague Verne Hudson).
Fetter's work included the 1964 development of ergonomic descriptions of the human body that are both accurate and adaptable to different environments, and this resulted in the first 3D animated "wire-frame" figures.
Such human figures became one of the most iconic images of the early history of computer graphics, and often were referred to as the "Boeing Man". Fetter died in 2002.

Ivan Sutherland

Ivan Sutherland is considered by many to be the creator of Interactive Computer Graphics, and an internet pioneer. He worked at the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in 1962, where he developed a program called ''Sketchpad I'', which allowed the user to interact directly with the image on the screen. This was the first Graphical User Interface, and is considered one of the most influential computer programs ever written by an individual.

Mid-1960s to mid-1970s

The University of Utah

Utah was a major center for computer animation in this period. The computer science faculty was founded by David Evans in 1965, and many of the basic techniques of 3D computer graphics were developed here in the early 1970s with ARPA funding (''Advanced Research Projects Agency''). Research results included Gouraud, Phong, and Blinn shading, texture mapping, hidden surface algorithms, curved surface subdivision, real-time line-drawing and raster image display hardware, and early virtual reality work. In the words of Robert Rivlin in his 1986 book ''The Algorithmic Image: Graphic Visions of the Computer Age'', "almost every influential person in the modern computer-graphics community either passed through the University of Utah or came into contact with it in some way".

Evans and Sutherland

In 1968, Ivan Sutherland teamed up with David Evans to found the company Evans & Sutherland—both were professors in the Computer Science Department at the University of Utah, and the company was formed to produce new hardware designed to run the systems being developed in the University. Many such algorithms have later resulted in the generation of significant hardware implementation, including the Geometry Engine, the Head-mounted display, the Frame buffer, and Flight simulators. Most of the employees were active or former students, and included Jim Clark, who started Silicon Graphics in 1981, Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar in 1979, and John Warnock of Adobe Systems in 1982.

First computer animated character, Nikolai Konstantinov

In 1968, a group of Soviet physicists and mathematicians with N. Konstantinov as its head created a mathematical model for the motion of a cat. On a BESM-4 computer they devised a programme for solving the ordinary differential equations for this model. The Computer printed hundreds of frames on paper using alphabet symbols that were later filmed in sequence thus creating the first computer animation of a character, a walking cat.

Ohio State

Charles Csuri, an artist at The Ohio State University (OSU), started experimenting with the application of computer graphics to art in 1963. His efforts resulted in a prominent CG research laboratory that received funding from the National Science Foundation and other government and private agencies. The work at OSU revolved around animation languages, complex modeling environments, user-centric interfaces, human and creature motion descriptions, and other areas of interest to the discipline.

''Cybernetic Serendipity''

In July 1968, the arts journal ''Studio International'' published a special issue titled ''Cybernetic Serendipity – The Computer and the Arts'', which catalogued a comprehensive collection of items and examples of work being done in the field of computer art in organisations all over the world, and shown in exhibitions in London, UK, San Francisco, CA. and Washington, DC.Scanned copy of ''Cybernetic Serendipity'', PDF file, 11MB, free download
(retrieved July 23, 2012). This marked a milestone in the development of the medium, and was considered by many to be of widespread influence and inspiration. Apart from all the examples mentioned above, two other particularly well known iconic images from this include ''Chaos to Order'' by Charles Csuri (often referred to as the ''Hummingbird''), created at Ohio State University in 1967, and ''Running Cola is Africa'' by Masao Komura and Koji Fujino created at the Computer Technique Group, Japan, also in 1967.

Scanimate

The first machine to achieve widespread public attention in the media was Scanimate, an analog computer animation system designed and built by Lee Harrison of the Computer Image Corporation in Denver. From around 1969 onward, Scanimate systems were used to produce much of the video-based animation seen on television in commercials, show titles, and other graphics. It could create animations in real time, a great advantage over digital systems at the time.

National Film Board of Canada

The National Film Board of Canada, already a world center for animation art, also began experimentation with computer techniques in 1969. Most well-known of the early pioneers with this was artist Peter Foldes, who completed ''Metadata'' in 1971. This film comprised drawings animated by gradually changing from one image to the next, a technique known as "interpolating" (also known as "inbetweening" or "morphing"), which also featured in a number of earlier art examples during the 1960s.Fro
"The Film Animator Today: Artists Without A Canvas"
(retrieved April 22, 2012) In 1974, Foldes completed '' Hunger / La Faim'', which was one of the first films to show solid filled (raster scanned) rendering, and was awarded the Jury Prize in the short film category at 1974 Cannes Film Festival, as well as an Academy Award nomination.

Atlas Computer Laboratory and Antics

The Atlas Computer Laboratory near Oxford was for many years a major facility for computer animation in Britain. The first entertainment cartoon made was ''The Flexipede'', by Tony Pritchett, which was first shown publicly at the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition in 1968. Artist Colin Emmett and animator Alan Kitching first developed solid filled colour rendering in 1972, notably for the title animation for the BBC
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