Computer Animation Timeline Assignment

By meachamk

  • Walter Elias Disney

    Walter Elias Disney
    Walt Disney was the pioneer and innovator of animation. His central love for entertainment led him to his initial success in Hollywood with his "Alice Comedies" after his Laugh-O-Grams business went bankrupt (Brad, 1996). His motion pictures industry spanned a career of 43 years. Disneyland opened in 1955, a place for the public to experience the joy and amusement of Walt Disney's imagination and creation first-hand.
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    5 Major Figures of Computer Animation History

    Walt Disney (1901)
    Glen Keane (1954)
    John Lasseter (1957)
    Rex Grignon (1962)
    Peter H. Docter (1968)

  • [Technicolor] Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

    [Technicolor] Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
    Disney's first Full Length Animation Feature produced an unheard of $1,499,000 at the box office during the Depression (Brad, 1996). The glowing Technicolor of Snow White changed the game of the industry, forcing competitor rivals such as the Fleischer brothers (creators of Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons) to play on his field. Disney liked songs of innocence and and a call to reconnect with nature. After this great accomplishment, Disney went on to produce Pinnochio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi.
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    3 Works Significant to Art in Computer Animation

    Snow White and The Seven Dwarves (1937)
    Luxo Jr. (1986)
    Toy Story (1995)
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    3 Major Developments in Computer Animation

    Technicolor [Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937)]
    Optical Compositing [Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)]
    Digital Animation [Jurassic Park (1993)]

  • Communist Influences in the Film Industry

    Communist Influences in the Film Industry
    Hollywood industry professionals and moviegoers fear communist influences corrupting the media. Hearings are carried forward, outing potential sympathizers of communism. Friendly witnesses included Ronald Reagan and Walt Disney (Latson, 2014).
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    2 World Events Outside the Design Industry

    Communist Influences in the Film Industry (1947)
    First Men on the Moon (1969)

  • Glen Keane

    Glen Keane
    Legendary Cartoonist Glen Keane worked on Disney's first digital inked and painted characters. He joined Disney in 1974 and worked on Rescuers Down Under (Price 2011). Later works include The Little Mermaid, Beauty and The Beast, Tarzan, Treasure Planet, and Tangled.

  • John Lasseter

    John Lasseter
    John Lasseter was fired for promoting computer animation in Disney, then hired by Lucasfilm, which was later purchased by Pixar. He is now the Chief Creative Officer of Disney and Pixar Animation Studios and the Principal Creative Advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering (Walt Disney Studios, 2013). Lasseter made his directorial debut in Toy Story (1995), the first fully computer-animated feature film. He has executive produced all Pixar features since Monsters, Inc. (2001).

  • Rex Grignon

    Rex Grignon
    Rex Grignon helped Disney with animation footage for Toy Story, and is the former Head of Character Animation with Dreamworks. He left the big studio feature films to start an online animation studio called Nimble Collective. When interviewed by studiodaily.com (Robertson, B.) Rex said, "We aren’t a mini-Pixar or mini-DreamWorks. We want to help people turn their ideas into films. We’ll give them a way to distribute. Nimble is really about the individual."

  • Peter H. Docter

    Peter H. Docter
    Peter Docter served as animator and co-story writer of Toy Story, Up, and Wall-E. He directed Monsters Inc. which received an Academy Award nomination, and Up was selected to open the Cannes International Film Festival, marking the first Disney film and a first for animated movies to ever recieve that honor (MacDonald, 2015). He is currently working on directing Inside Out.

  • First Men on the Moon

    First Men on the Moon
    The United States accomplished their goal of sending the first man on the moon and safely back. Actually, there were three men: Neil Armstrong, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, and Michael Collins. In this image, Neil Armstrong takes a picture of Buzz Aldrin as he performs scientific experiments on the moon (Rosenberg, 2015).

  • Luxo Jr.

    Luxo Jr.
    Luxo Jr. is Pixar's first computer-animated short film. It was the first short film of its kind to achieve the emotional impact of a story told with characters completely made using computer-animation. According to Garcia (2013), John Lasseter said, "The thing I wanted to do in Luxo Jr. was make the characters and story the most important thing, not the fact that it was done with computer graphics."

  • [Optical Compositing] Who Framed Roger Rabbit

    [Optical Compositing] Who Framed Roger Rabbit
    Before computer-animation was created, optical compositing spearheaded the way to combining animated creations with live film recordings. The first character created using optical compositing was The Stained Glass Knight in Spielberg's Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). Industrial Light & Magic bridged the gap between the two worlds of animation and live action in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Nunes 2015).

  • [Digital Animation] Jurrasic Park

    [Digital Animation] Jurrasic Park
    Using digital compositing technology, Industrial Light & Magic created full digital dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993). Digital animators did motion studies on elephants, reptiles, and birds to portray convincing ideas of dinosaur movement (Letteri, 2013).

  • Toy Story

    Toy Story
    Toy Story, Disney and Pixar's first digitally animated full-length feature, was the first movie that used three-dimensional computer-animation to make an entire full-length film. Software capable of creating a character's motions had never before been available. "In traditional animation, a lead animator sets key frames or poses for a character and junior animators draw the ‘in-betweens’ from pose to pose. Now, artists could use the computer to do that" (Letteri, 2013).