14 Cutting-Edge Advancements in CGI That You Can Now Do on Your Phone From the Toilet
It took 800,000 machine hours to render all of Toy Story. Do you have any idea how many shitty A.I. animations I could rattle off in that time?
‘Vertigo’ (1958)
The opening credits featured some spinning swirls, like a montage of neon spirographs. They made it by dangling a pendulum over a camera that was mounted on a World War II anti-aircraft gun barrel. Now you can quickly copy a couple spirograph PNGs and move on with your life.
‘Flexipede’ (1968)
This was the first animated cartoon that wasn’t a medical or mechanical illustration, but meant strictly for entertainment, and it was made by a dang computer. A blocky little centipede creeks back and forth on the screen, then in the third act, eats the butt of a bouncy one-legged freak. I’m serious, he really gets in there with his tongue. I hate to say it, but the worst A.I. animator could blow this pervert out of the water with a 15-word prompt.
‘Kitty’ (1968)
A gaggle of Soviet math dweebs calculated the movements of a cat walking, converted it to proto-ASCII art, printed out hundreds of pages that they collated into a flipbook, then wrote a whole book report on it. The physics simulation techniques they used directly inspired most of today’s CGI movies and video games. Still, that’s a lot of work to make a cat GIF.
‘Metadata’ (1971)
This was the first keyframe animation, and it was basically just a bunch of crudely drawn nude figures. They didn’t simulate realistic motion, but their eyeballs did kind of kiss at one point? RIP Peter Foldes, you would have loved Homestar Runner.
‘Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory’ (1971)
Upon rewatching, the Oompa Loompa corporal punishment scenes stick out visually like a sore thumb. Some of the lyrics swirl on and off screen in flashing colors, like a cheap bumper that pops on screen in a 1970s weather report while the weatherman is doing a bump off screen. That’s the signature style of a technology called Scanimate, that was used for a few decades before modern digital animation became possible. You or I could make a PowerPoint presentation that’s more engaging and dynamic.
‘Westworld’ (1973)
The first 2D animation in a feature film was a shot from the point-of-view of the Gunslinger that looks as if the Predator had astigmatism. You can buy a thermal imaging accessory for your iPhone for like a hundred bucks that could do a better job, quicker.
‘Faces & Body Parts’ (1974)
The first polygonal talking human face was like, a half step above a rage face. It looks like that opening frame in Mario 64 where you can tweak Mario’s face, except it’s your sleep paralysis demon. This dude is hard to look at, but it’s an untapped resource for reaction GIFs.
‘Hobart Street Scene’ (1976)
This was the first example of “hidden line removal” in history — basically, a 3D wireframe animation where they could make parts of polygons in the background disappear, causing polygons in the front to appear solid. Big whoop, I can build an entire city with The Simpsons: Tapped Out (RIP).
‘Looker’ (1981)
This was the first full human body rendered in 3D, technically, but it was used more as a futuristic-looking computer graphic than an actual CGI human. The 3D rendered figure isn’t very dynamic, but it does have fully rendered nipples, which I have to imagine is also a first.
‘The Works’ (1982)
The first CGI feature film in history! Almost. Production was taking forever, and the company’s top talent got headhunted by Lucasfilm, so it was never finished. It was supposed to be about a supercomputer that accidentally triggered an apocalyptic world war, then felt super guilty about it, and tried to rebuild the planet with robotic ants and stuff. It all feels very Pixar, and for good reason — lots of the people who toiled on this project for the better part of a decade went on to work for Pixar and DreamWorks.
‘Rock & Rule’ (1983)
Modern nerds take a lot of flack, but this animation was designed for a breed of dweeb that simply no longer exists. It was a sci-fi fantasy musical cartoon, for adults, featuring songs by Cheap Trick, Iggy Pop and Earth, Wind & Fire. They developed a cutting-edge computer-guided system for animating bright flashes, and made liberal use of it. Tragically, the $8 million budget only grossed $30k, despite featuring a very busty half-cat half-human damsel in distress.
‘Dream Flight’ (1983)
This is the first film produced entirely by programming a computer. It’s only eight minutes long, and looks as if someone made Koyaanisqatsi on a graphing calculator.
‘The Last Starfighter’ (1984)
This is the first use of “integrated CGI,” where they really wanted the computer graphics to look like real stuff interacting with the environment, not just futuristic techno set dressing on a computer screen. All the shots of ships flying were completely computer generated, and I gotta say: They look marginally better than someone holding a LEGO spaceship in front of a green screen and going “zzzzzoooOOOOOOMMM!!”
‘Tony de Peltrie’ (1985)
This eight-minute Canadian short was the first example of what we’ll generously call a “human” emoting with its face and body language. Tony looks like Bob from those old Enzyte commercials ate a bee.
