Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation

Computer graphics (or CG) has changed the way we experience the art of moving images. Computer graphics is the difference between Steamboat Willie and Buzz Lightyear, between ping pong and PONG. It began in 1963 when an MIT graduate student named Ivan Sutherland created the first true computer animation program. Instead of presenting a series of numbers, Sutherland’s Sketchpad program drew lines that created recognizable images. Sutherland noted: “Since motion can be put into Sketchpad drawings, it might be exciting to try making cartoons.” This book, the first full-length history of CG, shows us how Sutherland’s seemingly offhand idea grew into a multibillion dollar industry. In Moving Innovation, Tom Sito — himself an animator and industry insider for more than thirty years — describes the evolution of CG. The history of traditional cinema technology is a fairly straight path from Lumière to MGM. Writing the history of CG, Sito maps simultaneous accomplishments in multiple locales — academia, the military-industrial complex, movie special effects, video games, experimental film, corporate research, and commercial animation. His story features a memorable cast of characters — math nerds, avant-garde artists, cold warriors, hippies, video game enthusiasts, and studio executives: disparate types united by a common vision. Computer animation did not begin just with Pixar; Sito shows us how fifty years of work by this motley crew made movies like Toy Story and Avatar possible.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Film and Television at the Dawn of the Digital Revolution
Chapter 2 Analog Dreams: Bohemians, Beatniks, and the Whitneys
Chapter 3 Spook Work: The Government and the Military
Chapter 4 Academia
Chapter 5 Xerox PARC and Corporate Culture
Chapter 6 Hackers
Chapter 7 Nolan Bushnell and the Games People Play
Chapter 8 To Dream the Impossible Dream: The New York Institute of Technology, 1974–1986
Chapter 9 Motion Picture Visual Effects and Tron
Chapter 10 Bob Abel, Whitney-Demos, and the Eighties: The Wild West of CG
Chapter 11 Motion Capture: The Uncanny Hybrid
Chapter 12 The Cartoon Animation Industry
Chapter 13 Pixar
Chapter 14 The Conquest of Hollywood

Appendix 1: Dramatis Personae
Appendix 2: Glossary
Appendix 3: Alphabet Soup: CG Acronyms and Abbreviations