Yoichiro Kawaguchi
A programmer and animator, he was a pioneer of computer software that grows images in an organic way, called Growth Model. His program uses algorithms to generate brightly coloured worlds.
Dragons Lair(1983) was a video game that was created by ex-disney animator Don Bluth. It caused a stir in arcades due to its full quality animation sequences.
Commodore 64(1983)
. The commodore 64 was one of the first affordable home pcs to be released. This opened up access to everyone and created a generation of computer artists and programmers.
Autodesk Maya
Wavefront Technologies was formed in 1984 by Bill Kovacs, one of the software developers for Tron. His partner Roy Hall developed video manipulation and animation software after Kovacs left the company. In 1995 Silicon Graphics bought Wavefront Technologies and Alias Research to merge them into a new company, that produced Alias/Wavefront advanced computer animation software. After a collaboration with Walt Disney, Alias/Wavefront was turned into Maya in 1998.
Softimage released in 1988 became the industry standard for animation and preferred choice for character animation. The first version of 3DS Max was released in 1990 by Autodesk. Autodesk later purchased Maya and Softimage to become the market leaders in 3D animation software. Maya won the oscar for technical achievements in 2003.
John Lasseter worked for Disney, creating the CGI test version of Where the Wild Things Are however since Tron wasnt that well received Disney decided to can the animation project. Spike Jonze eventually made it in 2008 using facial CGI. After he left Disney he worked at the Graphics Group unit of Lucasfilm. He helped create the first photo realistic CGI animated character in Young Sherlock Holmes(1985). In 1986, his division of Lucasfilm was sold by George Lucas to Steve Jobs as he needed the money. Lasseter worke don short films for the newly formed company - Pixar Animation Studios.
Motion Capture
Rotoscoping was used for the main character in Gullivers Travels(1939) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937).
Jim Henson's Creature Shop worked with Pacific Images to create a digital version of Waldo from The Muppets that could be controlled in real time. Robert Abel and Associates created a motion capture sequence in 1984 called Sexy Robot. In 1990 Jeff Klesiser and Diana Walczak worked on a motion capture music video for Perla Batalla. 1990 was also the year that the first failed attempt at motion capture in a feature film occurred - Total Recall. The Lawnmower Man in 1991 contained short mo-cap shots, just like Peter Gabriel's music videos.
Video games were the first industry to extensively use mo-cap, the first one being Atari's Highlander: The Last of the McLeods in 1995. GTA3(2001) was another milestone for gameplay and mo-cap
The first fully animated film with mo-cap was Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists(2000), Final fantasy: The Spirits Within was the first attempt at photo realistic worlds with mo-cap in 2001. Lord of the RingsL The Two Towers(2002) had Andy Serkis as Gollum and again as Kong in King Kong(2005).
Uncanny Valley - Theorised by Masahiro Mori
The uncanny valley is the theory that when AI humans(robots/cgi) get to the point that they are looking and acting like humans, it causes revulsion or and uneasy feeling in the human observers. The valley is the dip in the positive reaction to the robots human appearance when it gets too close. The theory also says that if the robot becomes completely identical to a human, that uneasy feeling disappears and the observer response becomes positive again. David Hanson has done further research into the uncanny and has discovered that making the robots face look slightly cartoony or stylised makes the observer response positive again.
Uncanny Example
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