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BSA206 1980s Computer animation Milestones

Yoichiro Kawaguchi was a computer programmer and animator and a pioneer of computer software that grows images in an organic way. He has a program called Growth Model that uses algorithms that can generate brightly coloured psychedelic worlds.

In 1983 a video game called Dragons lair became very popular in arcades because of its full quality animated sequences that were made by Don Bluth, an ex-Disney animator.

The Commodore 64 was released in 1983. It was one of the first affordable home computers. a year earlier the Sinclair Spectrum had been released in Europe. However, the affordability of the Commodore 64 opened up the creation of computer graphics to a large group of people, inspiring a generation of computer artists and graphic designers.

In 1984 Wavefront Technologies was formed by Bill Kovacs who, along with Roy Hall, had developed some of the software used on Tron.
Kovacs left and Hall then developed video manipulation and animation software. In 1995 Silicon Graphics bought Wavefront Technologies and merged the Canadian firm, Alias research with them and they produced the advanced computer animation software Alias/Wavefront.
Later on, with the help of Walt Disney, Alias/Waveform was developed into Maya (1998).
Softimage, which was released in 1988 became industry standard in animation and was the preferred choice for character animation.
The first version of a 3D Studio (3DS Max) was released in 1990 by Autodesk who were later bought by Maya and Softimage and became the market leaders in 3D animation winning the Oscar for technical achievements in 2003.

John Lasseter, who worked for Disney, created a test for a CGI version of the book, Where the Wild things are. As a result of the disappointing reaction to Tron, Disney thought computer animation didn't have a future and passed on the project. The film was made in 2008 by Spike Jonze using extensive facial CGI animation.
John Lasseter left Disney and worked at Lucasfilm to help create The Adventures of Andre and Wally B in 1984. In 1986 Lucas film was sold by george Lucas to Steve Jobs so Lasseter produced short films for the new company, Pixar. He produced the famous Luxo Jr. Animation that Pixar use before many of their movies.

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