The following is a list of short animation films that have some historical significance. Please note that the descriptions below are for the most part copied directly from the relevant source pages in the references section. Some of the videos are sourced from the Vintage CG youtube channel and text is copied verbatim from the video description.

1972, A Computer Animated Hand

A Computer Animated Hand is a 1972 American computer-animated film produced by Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke. Produced during Catmull’s tenure at the University of Utah, the short was created for a graduate course project. After creating a model of Catmull’s left hand, 350 triangles and polygons were drawn in ink on the model. The model was digitized and laboriously animated in a three-dimensional animation program that Catmull wrote.

1976 - 1979, Information International Inc (Triple-I) Reel

Early demo reel of Information International, Inc, who would later go on to produce visual effects for the film Tron.

1978, The Compleat Angler

Groundbreaking early ray-traced computer animation, created by Turner Whitted at Bell Labs in the late 1970’s.

1978 - 1980, Flybys of Jupiter & Saturn

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) was and is a federally funded R&D center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California. Blinn would become synonymous with JPL and with graphics in general. This link between JPL and Blinn turned on the now famous NASA Voyager / JPL flyby simulations of Jupiter and Saturn. So young was computer graphics and its use so rare in the public arena that when Blinn’s shots were shown widely on the national news, people thought they were real. “There were two Voyager spacecraft sent up to Jupiter and Saturn,” recalls Blinn, “and they got there about six or eight months apart. Some people thought that the movie was made by one of the spacecraft watching the other one.”

1985, Chromosaurus

Early demo/for-fun short produced at Pacific Data Images in 1985. It’s got chrome! It’s got dinosaurs! It’s got CHROME DINOSAURS! RAWR! This short became a staple of many computer animation compilations. Today PDI is perhaps best known for making the Shrek and Madagascar feature films.

1986, The Amiga Juggler

Sculpt 3D is a raytrace application released in 1987 for Amiga computers programmed by Eric Graham2. Sculpt 3D was one of the first ray tracing applications released for the Amiga computers. It proved that raytracing could be done on home computers as well as on mainframes. The first demo that showed the raytracing capabilities was an animation of a juggler juggling three chrome balls. Even though the juggler was constructed out of spheres, the ball’s reflections and movement made it look realistic. The juggler demo was generated on an experimental version of Sculpt 3D. The animation was released in January 1986.

1986, Luxo Jr.

Luxo Jr. is a 1986 American computer-animated short film produced and released by Pixar in 1986. Written and directed by John Lasseter, this two-minute short film revolves around one larger and one smaller desk lamp. The larger lamp, named Luxo Sr., looks on while the smaller, “younger” Luxo Jr. plays exuberantly with a ball that it accidentally deflates. Luxo Jr. was Pixar’s first animation after Ed Catmull and John Lasseter left Industrial Light & Magic’s computer division. It is the source of Luxo Jr., the hopping desk lamp included in Pixar’s corporate logo.

References / Further Reading