Proto-Pixar animation

I’ve taken too long to post this video of a very early piece of 3D computer animation, created in 1972 by Ed Catmull and fellow University of Utah doctoral student Fred Parke. The hand animation is Catmull’s and the face animation is Parke’s. (Catmull digitized a cast of his own hand and Parke digitized his wife’s face.) Short bits of the film appeared four years later in the film Futureworld (it was still state-of-the-art stuff).

Some background is in this post by Robby Ingebretsen, son of Robert B. Ingebretsen, a classmate of Catmull and Parke who created the 3D titles; still more background is on pp. 13-14 of The Pixar Touch.

40 Year Old 3D Computer Graphics (Pixar, 1972) from Robby Ingebretsen on Vimeo.