Autodesk Animator is a 2D

computer animation Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating Film, moving images. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both still images and moving images, while computer animation refers to moving images. Virtu ...

and painting program published in 1989 for

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

. It was considered groundbreaking when initially released.Graphics - Winner: Autodesk Animator
''"Robert Bennett, Lewis Gartenberg, David Kalish, Jim Kent, Jack Powell, Gary Yost"'' on pcmag.com (1989)

Functionality

Animator gave the ability to do frame-by-frame animation (creating each frame as an individual picture, much like

Traditional animation Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawing, drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation of the 20th century, until there wa ...

) . Animator Studio also had

tweening Inbetweening, also known as tweening, is a process in animation that involves creating intermediate frames, called inbetweens, between two keyframes. The intended result is to create the illusion of movement by smoothly transitioning one image in ...

features (transforming one shape into another by letting the computer draw each in-between shape onto a separate frame). Animator and Animator Pro supported FLI and FLC animation file formats, while Animator Studio also supported the

AVI Avi is a given name, usually masculine, often a diminutive of Avram (given name), Avram, Avraham, etc. It is sometimes feminine and a diminutive of the Hebrew spelling of Abigail (name), Abigail. People with the given name include: * Avi (author ...

format. Animator was particularly strong in Palette based editing, effects (like Color cycling) and animations a favored technology in the time of indexed CGA and VGA graphics modes. Unlike other DOS software from that time, Animator was not restricted by the 640 kilobyte

conventional memory In DOS memory management, conventional memory, also called base memory, is the first 640 kilobytes of the memory on IBM PC or compatible systems. It is the read-write memory directly addressable by the processor for use by the operating system ...

limitation as it utilized a

DOS extender A DOS extender is a computer software program running under DOS that enables software to run in a protected mode environment even though the host operating system is only capable of operating in real mode. DOS extenders were initially developed ...

Phar Lap Phar Lap (4 October 1926 – 5 April 1932) was a New Zealand-born champion Australian Thoroughbred horse racing, racehorse. Achieving great success during his distinguished career, his initial underdog status gave people hope during the ear ...

. Animator's combination of twenty tools multiplied by twenty inks, 3D 'optics,' unparalleled palette handling, custom fonts and many other useful features (such as its own internal

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

POCO), put it many years ahead of better known animation tools of the time.

Development history

''Animator'' originates back to its author's

Jim Kent William James Kent (born February 10, 1960) is an American research scientist and computer programmer. He has been a contributor to genome database projects and the 2003 winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award (Bioinformatics), Benjamin Franklin Aw ...

earlier program ''Cyber Paint'' for the

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

.The Antic Cyber Graphics Software and the Pre-History of Autodesk 3D Studio and Discreet 3ds max
Asterius.com. Retrieved on 2013-04-22.

evolved in 1989 his software into ''Animator'' for Gary Yost's "Yost Group" for

80286 The Intel 80286 (also marketed as the iAPX 286 and often called Intel 286) is a 16-bit microprocessor that was introduced on February 1, 1982. It was the first 8086-based CPU with separate, non-multiplexed address and data buses and also the fi ...

PCs with

.The First Pioneer in PC Animation: Autodesk Animator
by Dr. Mussy ''"October – November, marks an interesting anniversary for animation: 21 years ago, animation became available for the PC platform."'' (November 8, 2010) ''Animator'' was then licensed to

Autodesk Autodesk, Inc. is an American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquarte ...

, who published the software as ''Autodesk Animator''.

Releases

''Animator'' was debuted at

SIGGRAPH SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) is an annual conference centered around computer graphics organized by ACM, starting in 1974 in Boulder, CO. The main conference has always been held in North ...

1989, featuring a VGA graphics mode of 320×200 pixels with 256 colors. In July 1991, the successor Animator Pro was released, with the significant improvement of allowing almost any resolution and

color depth Color depth, also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to a pixel, the concept can be defined as bit ...

. The software was sold for approximately US$800 (US$1,800 in 2025), significantly more expensive than the previous version, addressing the professional audience. The 1995 released Animator Studio was a complete re-write for

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

, but was not anymore developed by the Yost Group.

Discontinuation and legacy

Eventually development of the product ended and support was discontinued by Autodesk. The

trademark A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a form of intellectual property that consists of a word, phrase, symbol, design, or a combination that identifies a Good (economics and accounting), product or Service (economics), service f ...

for "Autodesk Animator", filed on December 18, 1989, expired on July 21, 1997. Jim Kent kept

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, ...

s to the 300,000 lines

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

base of Animator Pro, and allowed it to be made available publicly under the

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...

in 2009.animator pro
on GitHub ''"All source code (unless otherwise marked, or if better information becomes available) is ©1989-1994 Jim Kent and is available here under the BSD license"'' The original 256 color ''Animator'' version for DOS is also provided as a

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

download. After some initial

code review Code review (sometimes referred to as peer review) is a software quality assurance activity in which one or more people examine the source code of a computer program, either after implementation or during the development process. The persons perf ...

porting In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...

to modern platforms was started on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

. As of April 2014 most of the

assembly language In computing, assembly language (alternatively assembler language or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence bet ...

source code had been ported to platform-agnostic C code and SDL was used as the target back-end framework.

Reception

Animator was considered to be groundbreaking in the field of

when it was initially released. In 1989 Animator won ''

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and continues . Overview ''PC Mag ...

''s "6th Annual Technical Excellence Award for Graphics". Also,

video game developer A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with em ...

s used the software for intros and other animated sequences in their games, for instance Formula One Grand Prix (1991,

MicroProse MicroProse is an American video game publisher and video game developer, developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the ''Civilization (series), Civilizat ...

Cannon Fodder Cannon fodder is an informal, derogatory term for combatants who are regarded or treated by government or military command as expendable in the face of enemy fire. The term is generally used in situations where combatants are forced to fight agains ...

(1993,

Virgin Interactive Avalon Interactive Group, Ltd., formerly known as Virgin Interactive Entertainment, was a British video game distributor based within Europe that formerly traded as the video game publishing and distributing division of British conglomerate the V ...

) and Jazz Jackrabbit 2 (1998,

Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American Video game developer, video game and software development, software developer and video game publisher, publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney (game developer), Tim Sween ...

); animators used the software for animation for shows such as ''

Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist ''Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist'' is an American adult animated sitcom created by Jonathan Katz and Tom Snyder for Comedy Central. It originally ran from May 28, 1995, to February 13, 2002. The series starred the voice talents of Jonathan ...

''. Animator Studio attempted to do more than previous versions of the program, yet it had limited success. It also lost the ergonomic fluidity that the DOS versions had and was overshadowed by

Toonz Toonz is a 2D animation software program. The base application is currently managed by Dwango as open-source software under the name OpenToonz. An extended commercial variant for professional individuals and studios, Toonz Premium, is being de ...

in terms of features and functionality. Animator Pro, though, was by far the most useful, and was exceptionally fast compared with today's animation programs. The program worked so well and had enough of an impact, that it convinced

James Cameron James Francis Cameron (born August 16, 1954) is a Canadian filmmaker, who resides in New Zealand. He is a major figure in the post-New Hollywood era and often uses novel technologies with a Classical Hollywood cinema, classical filmmaking styl ...

that CGI can create a character in his next film, '' Terminator 2: Judgment Day''; Autodesk did advertisement with this. There were also books written about Animator for instance "Inside Autodesk Animator: The Complete Guide to Animation on a PC" by New Riders Publishing in 1990.

References

External links

*
Gallery with examples of Animator created animations

Examples of animations made with Autodesk Animator Pro by Jecarci
{{Autodesk products 2D animation software Autodesk discontinued products 1989 software Formerly proprietary software Freeware 3D graphics software Free 3D graphics software Commercial software with available source code