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"Walt Disney once said, \u201CAnimation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive.\u201D For Disney, this was animation\u2019s magic \u2014 its power to bring imagination to life.\nDisney died in 1966, 11 years before computer animation\u2019s heralded debut in Star Wars, and he likely never imagined how life-like animation would become, or how pervasively it would be used in Hollywood. As viewers, we now hardly blink when we see a fully rendered alien planet or a teddy bear working the grocery store check-out counter.\nAnimation has largely stripped its reputation as a medium for children; it\u2019s been used far too successfully in major films to remain confined to kids. After all, who hasn\u2019t had the experience of going to an animated film and finding the theatre packed with adults? Who doesn\u2019t secretly remember the moment they were a little turned on during Avatar?\nConsidering animation\u2019s rapid evolution, it sometimes feels like we\u2019re just weeks away from Drake and Chris Brown settling their beef via a battle of photorealistic holograms.\nSo how did we get here? How did computer animation come to look so darn real?\nFrom the MoMA to Casper\nComputer animation debuted in 1967 in Belgium, and soon after at the MoMA, with Hummingbird, a ten minute film by Charles Csuri and James Shaffer. The film depicted a line drawing of a bird programmed with realistic movements and was shown to a high art crowd, who probably weren\u2019t fantasizing the medium\u2019s potential to create a sassy talking donkey.\nIn 1972, Ed Catmull, future co-founder of Pixar, created the first 3D computer-animated human hand and face, which was incorporated into the 1976 sci-fi thriller Futureworld. Computer animation didn\u2019t capture the mainstream\u2019s attention, though, until the classic trench run sequence in Star Wars, which used 3D wireframe graphics for the first time. It was the product of a lot of guesswork and brilliance, particularly by animator Larry Cuba. If you have 10 minutes to kill, this old-school video of Cuba explaining how they pulled it off is fascinating:\n\n\nThe late seventies were a time, though, when innovation didn\u2019t happen at the breakneck pace we\u2019re accustomed to today. The next big moment for computer animation didn\u2019t come until 1984, when a young member of George Lucas\u2019 Lucasfilms team, John Lasseter, spearheaded a one-minute CGI film called The Adventures of Andre and Wally B, which pioneered the use of super-curved shapes to create the fluid character movement, a staple of future films by DreamWorks and Pixar, where Lasseter would serve as CCO.\n1986\u2019s Labryrinth introduced the first 3D animal \u2014 an owl in the opening sequence \u2014 and 1991\u2019s Terminator 2: Judgment Day introduced the first realistic human movements by a CGI character, not to mention Arnold Schwarzenegger\u2019s obsession with voter demographics.\nIn 1993, computer animation\u2019s reputation soared with the release of Jurassic Park and its incredibly realistic dinosaurs. The creatures sent adolescent boys into fits of delight, even though the film only used computer animated dinosaurs for four of the fourteen minutes they were on screen.\nThen came 1995 and the release of Casper,  which introduced the first CGI protagonist to interact realistically with live actors, though that interaction was predominantly Christina Ricci trying to seduce a ghost.\nBut Casper was just a warm-up for Toy Story.\nThe Toy Story and Shrek Era\n\n\n\n\nSix months after Casper, the first feature-length CGI film was released: Toy Story. It was an incredible four-year undertaking by Pixar\u2019s John Lasseter and his team; the film was 81 times longer than Lasseter\u2019s first computer animated film a decade before. They faced two fatal challenges: a relatively tiny $30 million budget, and a small, inexperienced team. Of the 27 animators, half were rumored to have been borderline computer illiterate when production began.\n\"If we\u2019d known how small our budget and our crew was,\" remembered writer Peter Docter, \"we probably would have been scared out of our gourds. But we didn\u2019t, so it just felt like we were having a good time.\"\nThey thrived. The animators began by creating clay or computer-drawn models of the characters; once they had the models, they coded articulation and motion controls so that the characters could do things like run, jump and laugh. This was all done with the help of Menv, a modeling environment tool Pixar had been building for nine years. Menv\u2019s models proved incredibly complex \u2014 the protagonist, Woody, required 723 motion controls. It was a strain on man and machine alike; it took 800,000 machine hours to complete the film, and it took each animator a week to successfully sync an 8-second shot.  \nThere are more PhDs working on this film than any other in movie history,\u201D Pixar co-founder Steve Jobs told Wired at the time. \u201CAnd yet you don't need to know a thing about technology to love it.\"\nJobs was right. Audiences loved the film not just because of the impressive animation and three-dimensional realism, but also because of a superb script and voice work by Tom Hanks, Tim Allen and Don Rickles. It sparked computer animated films\u2019 reputation for pairing stunning visuals with compelling stories. That reputation was key, as computer animation\u2019s evolution hinged on the willingness of studios to invest in it.\nIn 1998, DreamWorks\u2019 Antz and Pixar\u2019s A Bug\u2019s Life maintained computer animation\u2019s stellar reputation, while briefly terrorizing countless entomophobic parents. The flood scene in Antz received widespread praise, particularly from those who couldn\u2019t wait for the bugs to die.\n\n\n\n\nComputer animation\u2019s next breakthrough came in 2001 with Shrek. Shrek delved into true world building; it included 36 separate in-film locations, more than any CGI feature before it. DreamWorks also made a huge advancement by taking the facial muscle rendering software it used in Antz and applying it to the whole body of Shrek\u2019s characters.\n\u201Cif you pay attention to Shrek when he talks, you see that when he opens his jaw, he forms a double chin,\u201D supervising animator Raman Hui explained, \u201Cbecause we have the fat and the muscles underneath. That kind of detail took us a long time to get right.\"\nShrek brought a new age of realism. Hair, skin and clothes flowed naturally in the elements; the challenge of making Donkey\u2019s fur flow smoothly helped animators render the realistic motion of grass, moss and beards (and other things hipsters like). Shrek grossed nearly a half billion dollars, won the first-ever Academy Award For Best Animated Feature, and established DreamWorks as an animation powerhouse, alongside Disney-Pixar.\nAdvancements in Photorealism and Live Action\n\n\n\n\nIn computer animation, there are two kinds of \u201Crealness.\u201D First, there\u2019s the \u201Crealness\u201D of Shrek, where the animation is still stylized and doesn\u2019t strive for photorealism. Then, there\u2019s photorealistic animation, which aims to make computer animation indistinguishable from live action.\nIn the same year Shrek was released, we also saw the release of Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within, the first photorealistic, computer-animated feature film. It was filmed using motion-capture technology, which translates recorded movements into animation.\n1,327 live action scenes were filmed to make the final animated product. Though the film flopped, the photorealistic visuals were a smash success. The film\u2019s protagonist, Aki Ross, made the cover of Maxim and was the only fictional character to make its list of \u201CTop 100 Sexiest Women Ever.\u201D Aki was a painstaking advancement in photorealistic animation; each of her 60,000 hairs was individually animated, and she was made up of about 400,000 polygons. Entertainment Weekly raved that, \"Calling this action heroine a cartoon would be like calling a Rembrandt a doodle,\" while naming Aki Ross to its \u201CIt\u201D girl list.\nThe advancements in photorealism and motion capture animation kept coming. In 2002\u2019s The Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers, Gollum was the first motion-capture character to interact directly with live-action characters. Two years later, Tom Hank\u2019s The Polar Express ushered motion-capture films into the mainstream.\nPhotorealistic animation\u2019s quantum leap came in 2009 with Avatar, a project James Cameron had delayed nearly a decade to allow the technology to catch up to his vision. Cameron commissioned the creation of a camera that recorded facial expressions of actors for animators to use later, allowing for a perfect syncing of live action with animation. Cameron demanded perfection; he reportedly ordered that each plant on the alien planet of Pandora be individually rendered, even though each one contained roughly one million polygons. No wonder it took nearly $300 million to produce Avatar.\nCameron\u2019s goal was to create a film where the audience couldn\u2019t tell what was animated and what was real. He succeeded. Now, the question is, \u201CWhat\u2019s next?\u201D\nWhat\u2019s Next\nMost people think that the animated rendering of humans hasn\u2019t been perfected yet; Cameron\u2019s 10-foot blue animated Na\u2019vi aliens in Avatar was seen as an easier venture than rendering humans, but Cameron doesn\u2019t think that was the case.\n\u201CIf we had put the same energy into creating a human as we put into creating the Na'vi, it would have been 100% indistinguishable from reality,\u201D Cameron told Entertainment Weekly. \u201CThe question is, why the hell would you do that? Why not just photograph the actor? Well, let's say Clint Eastwood really wanted to do one last Dirty Harry movie looking the way he did in 1975. He could absolutely do it now. And that would be cool.\u201D\nCameron has repeatedly emphasized that he doesn\u2019t view computer animation as a threat to actors, but rather as a tool to empower and transform them.\nAnd if that means we get to experience 1975 Clint Eastwood\u2019s career again, well, that would just go ahead and make our day."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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