Steve Jobs on Computer Animation as a Milestone for Film History, Before the Release of 'Toy Story'

[12dylan34]

Theater is life.
Cinema is art.
Television is furniture.
- Author unknown

Cinema was also considered a gimmick when it first came around in the very late 1800s as well. So was synced sound in cinema, etc.

It's a great quote, though.

 

[chrono1081]

Sadly today lots of people still discredit 3D animation and 3D art because they think you press a few buttons and the computer does the rest.

Its nice to see people appreciate it for what it really is like in this video.

 

[dugbug]

Im waiting for computer rendering that my mind will not say 'thats rendered'. I think they are there with appearance, but not movement. Really helps with immersion if done right.

Spiderman flitting around as if gravity had no meaning for example. Your mind instantly shouts 'fake' you enjoy it only as a cool looking effect. Animators have to get past that to embed us deeper in the immersion.

Avatar (on the other hand) really worked at this. Very few rendered sequences achieve it, but its getting there. More cameron: The sinking of the titanic. Amazingly Jurassic Park (one of the elder breakthroughs in the industry) did a lot of work to convince the audience the dinosaurs were real. Bringing fantasy into our world in a convincing fashion.

Just IMHO but really well done CG is awesome.

 

[chrono1081]

Im waiting for computer rendering that my mind will not say 'thats rendered'. I think they are there with appearance, but not movement. Really helps with immersion if done right.

Spiderman flitting around as if gravity had no meaning for example. Your mind instantly shouts 'fake' you enjoy it only as a cool looking effect. Animators have to get past that to embed us deeper in the immersion.

Avatar (on the other hand) really worked at this. Very few rendered sequences achieve it, but its getting there. More cameron: The sinking of the titanic. Amazingly Jurassic Park (one of the elder breakthroughs in the industry) did a lot of work to convince the audience the dinosaurs were real. Bringing fantasy into our world in a convincing fashion.

Just IMHO but really well done CG is awesome.

I agree.

Part of the problem is animators over-animate. They're usually trained in Disney's 12 rules of animation and it can be evident when seeing a movie and something moves too fluidly.

 

[theanimaster]

Aw man yeah~!

Not to discredit Pixar's accomplishments (quite the opposite, I think they're the best filmmakers on the planet), but the Canadian TV series ReBoot, the first fully CGI television program, started airing a year before Toy Story premiered.

I remember that show~! Used to be my favourite! It's what got me into 3D design and animation really (I wasn't able to watch Toy Story back then coz I couldn't afford a movie ticket).

Today though, after all those years, it's like... "Meh?" Wow. How perception changes...

 

[theanimaster]

In the clip, Steve does give Terminator it's due, and references it as a landmark. However, I think there is some merit to saying that the unit that became Pixar wouldn't have accomplished what it did, when it did, under Lucas. The fact that he sold the unit to Jobs shows, on the surface, that he had a different idea for it. This not to say that we wouldn't have had a fully CGI feature film eventually, but I don't see Lucas as the one who would have done it.

Also if you read the book iCon (Jeffrey S. Young) George Lucas was losing a heckload of money at the time. He was going to completely dismantle the CGI studio as he thought it was a big waste of time and money. Steve took the opportunity and proposed at exactly the right time. Lucas was DESPERATE.

...and to think there are idiots who doubt the visionary Steve Jobs was... the same idiots who think that all Steve did was create the iPad and shiny products.

 

[credit]

Thank you to the Internet Archive

This wonderful piece of history was originally posted at the Internet Archive. Fantastic. Thank you, Internet Archive!