Early CGI Was Horrifying

CGI. Now with liminal spaces.

Unknown creations beyond human comprehension

Also sometimes lamps

Often a teapot

Video Credits. Lots of good CGI stuff out there and I couldn't cover it all;

Ultimate History of CGI
Gabriel Mendes
Retro Space HD
Muzzy mawr
thelateraleye16
VintageCG
Rich S
Arbor Video
Sean Cunningham
saburwulf
Digital Guru
David Hoffman
crystalsculpture2
smeedysyd
Big 13

[carlcarlington]

Imagine being the guy who invented cgi only to moments later have countless bowling ally owner’s knocking down your door demanding a piece of this new technology

[gelp]

It’s easier for me to appreciate Veggie Tales now since you realize that in the beginning it was just four college dropouts working on one computer. Even if it looks crappy now, it looks incredible for 90s standards

[SubspaceEmber]

what's wild to me is that the early animations from the 70s predate digital storage of the actual animations, it's all stored on film, you can see the artifacting. It's wild that they were able to produce the images digitally, but had no easy way to reproduce those images at the time besides film (or maybe videotape, still analog though)

[Kitty.]

*5 years from now*
“Early AI was horrifying”

[phoenixgaming-plakadrakes]

I love old CGI. It was so weird and surreal and dreamlike but now it just replicates reality

[DomiAnimations]

Imagine if there was a horror movie that would end up taking advantage of this type of CGI,

it would be very interesting honestly

[DrewFeille]

A lot of the best CGI animations took their technical limitations and ran with them.

Surfaces look like plastic? Make your movie about plastic toys.

Animations are robotic and clunky? Make your characters robots or AI.

The world seems artificial and computer-generated? Set your whole story in a virtual world inside a computer.

[glitchedoom]

Early CGI really went hard on the "haunted circus" aesthetic.

[thethemperoroftheholybri]

For anyone wondering why early CGI is so abstract, its to show off that you could do literally anything with CGI, an example of what i mean is when Tin Toy was first shown one guy from a studio asked "how did you program fear into that toy?", people genuinely had no idea how it worked or it's capabilities if they had no prior knowledge.

[goodroach]

You know, the fact people thought that the moon landings were CGIs when the CGIs looked like THIS even after 1970s is kind of funny.

Edit: The main arguement is that it staged sorta like a live action movie set, but some people actually believe it was CGI.

[FelipeJaquez]

Shitty CGI has a charm to me, especially the early 2000s CGI. Nostalgia pumped into my veins via IV.

[roar]

As someone who lived through this time as a child I can say that even though the graphics were crude they looked incredible and inspiring. I knew by the time I was an adult that they would improve immensely. I remember going to an early imax theater in a museum and watching a 20-30 minute movie all done with grids and triangles and feeling like I was witnessing something incredible

[kamikeserpentail]

It's so interesting that "Dinosaur Stuff" is now basically the kind of thing someone would make after just a couple weeks messing with Blender.

[flipnap]

if you were around when it was emerging you'd know it was the most fantastic thing any of us had ever seen. there was no concept yet of "good" or "bad" CG. it was just magic

[blizzardblast]

The amazing part about this is how Blender is capable of doing all this tenfold, and is completely free

[jevinday]

That demo from the 70s with the purple guy with the uncle Sam hat is amazing! I would have NEVER guessed that was made in the 70s. That's truly amazing.

[nomadman]

Back in 1990, I worked with 2 animators who produced CGI using an Amiga computer outfitted with a Newtek Video Toaster. Each frame had to be rendered and layed down to tape on a JVC MII machine. A short clip would take all night to render. My job was to edit all this animation together. Heady Times. 👍

[KRAFTWERKK]

As a kid i always LOVED seeing these Computer graphic animations because of the synthetic look and vibe and the awesome atmosphere they had. I never saw them creepy but the uncanny feeling was part of the fascination. Photorealism can be impressive too but personally i always preferred computer graphic animations to embrace their synthetic digital nature and really love the smooth flat shaded looks with very simple visual shading. It is a visual style i just really really love. Especially when such CGI sequences are coming from a film source and having this film-layer added to it with the smoother edges and soft glows.

[AB-Prince]

I love how for toy story, the animations of the toys were a bit staccato due to technical limitations, but in the later movies they kept it as a stylistic choice.

[nashton]

It's funny how I can see the vaporware aesthetic was so influenced by 80s animation and its limitations.