Oddity Archive: Episode 177 - Scanimate
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- Опубликовано: 28 ноя 2024
- A banquet of oversaturated and generation-lossy goodness from the Archive! Fill-in-the-blankwave fans will love it.
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I know you joke about your history lessons but I genuinely enjoy those parts of the archive.
tristow honestly its some of the best stuff especially with stuff like this i’ve never heard of. Being a bit of an animation buff this was extremely fascinating to learn the roots of computer animation
The history lessons are well written and researched. Ben does a great job with them.
Right? That’s the main draw for me.
@@daftoptimist All adds to my quest to become the only living human encyclopedia...
My 'experience' with Scanimate is all the use it got in The Electric Company. Of course, I had no idea about any of that since I was a little kid, but the style is so distinctive that you can't mistake it.
(And, as an aside, two episodes of Turn On - presumably the only ones fully completed - have leaked and made their way onto RUclips. It's as awful as contemporary accounts described it.)
The moment computers, be they PC or Mac or whatever, got powerful enough to render stuff, like, say, the Genesis sequence in Wrath of Khan, dedicated machines like that were dead. Not surprised they didn't survive the 80s.
True, but when used together with Scanimate for after-effects, old school 80s CGI was one-of-a-kind!
Silicon Graphics invented the first micro level hardware accelerated 3D chip in about 1983. Before the mid 90s, if you wanted to do 3D animation on a computer smaller than a giant server rack / mainframe cabinet (like the early DEC VAXen and PDP-11s and maybe IBM and what you see with the Scanimate racks), you needed a Silicon Graphics computer. They did most of their early animation and modeling on Alias / Wavefront and used a heavily modified and expanded version of UNIX. I'm restoring an SGI Personal IRIS machine from 1991 right now and have a couple newer machines (that are much easier to work on and deal with) already working fine.
While in North America Scanimate became really common, in Latin America the technique usage from machines bought for the region is more rare. Here in Chile, for example, the public broadcaster (TVN) was the only one to have its own Scanimate machine (and they used it really well) while competitors, like the leader Canal 13, had to ask North American companies for their Scanimate. And don't ask for the rest of South America: apart from Chile and Brazil, own Scanimate in South America is (almost) non-existent!
(PS: for TVN, it seems that the Pinochet dictatorship had the money to buy the technology for the channel but no money for the population back then 😥)
I FINALLY ordered my copy of Dream Machine. Scanimate has inspired me so much. It's my inspiration when making graphics. Stuff like this needs to be preserved. Thank you, Dave, and all the others who made all of this possible.
We don't care that this wasn't "Definitive", we just care that it's being remembered at all...Good episode, Ben
Surprised there isn't any Electric Company/70's Sesame Street footage. They used the hell out of Scanimate back in the day.
I was thinking the same thing, especially Electric Company.
I think Seasame Street had a scanimate segment with the character "Mr. Nobody", who was previously an actual "puppet" performed by Jim Henson on various talk shows. The ones on seasame street instead utilized scanimate, which in turn made it too surreal/ uncanny for my tastes.
@@bryanzambrano6859 Mr Nobody was still a hand puppet but used scannimate for graphics... Here's a rare behind the scenes ...
ruclips.net/video/YwVLmmpacVQ/видео.html
The "Noise" clip somehow feels like it's from Electric Company, but I can't seem to find it if that's the case.
@@Feslmogh to me, the one used in seaseme street looked a bit too artificial ruclips.net/video/v0aWP3IaBZ4/видео.html (I was thinking about this variation though.) Thanks for the video though, I've never come across that one before.
Non-interesting piece of trivia: the Scanimate machine used a bank of sliding switches produced by Cherry to enter data. These are identical to the switch banks used for patching on the ARP 2500 audio synthesizer from the same time period, most famously used to contact aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
ooh neat tidbit!
*2600
@@BluePlanetMedia it was the Arp 2500 that appeared in Close Encounters. The 2600 was used for R2D2 voice in Star Wars I think
@@joeakajoe1 the 2600 is highly coveted today, Korg even did a rerelease a few years ago. A classic synth for sure.
The tiny patch cables remind me of some old synths I can't recollect, Buchla units I think. That scanimate patch bay reminds me a bit of of the xy pegboard on the EMS Synthi A, too.
Scanimate is awesome! Don't disrespect it. It has some awesome capabilities making it much quicker than digital.
Sesame Street and Electric Company in the 70s had lots of Scanimate produced clips. Dave Seig really should find technicians who used them back in the day and get their input on using them. The more sophisticated setups had a control room and lots of programming inputs. Scanimate could conceivably be updated to output high definition video if someone wanted to try.
Electric Company is one of the definitive examples of Scanimate. I used to watch it when it was new and have both DVD sets, have the ones shown here too. Still don't quite get how it works but I love it!
Honestly seeing the CEASER system and given it is a analog Adobe Flash I'd love to make cartoons on those machines since it just generates them with relatively little animators needed.
Dave has already modified his Scanimate to produce HD footage.
@@japoople oh nice
Watching the classic NASCAR races during the early CBS TBS and ESPN days late 70s to mid 80s was full of SCANAMATE for in race advertising, leaderboards etc
James Gentry *ScanImate
@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 who cares
Amazing episode about "Scanimate", they were really psychedelically ahead of its time especially with the logos of TV & Movie logos, TV Stations ID, Movie/Special Intro/Outros, Commercials and a whole a lot more!
Joseph A. Sobora I agree this is a great epsiode scanimate is basically 2d cgi when you think about it
Scanimation would later expand its horizons as time progressed before slowly fading away into obscurity due to modern tech like actual cgi
Actually found that video one of the most fascinating Archive segments in recent times. Was always curious which animation technique was used in those early music videos you mentioned (Kool & The Gang had one like that too). Never got an answer since those I'd see them with tended to have their head on high with the "haha look at all the old clothes and hairstyles" jokes. Happy to know now thanks to this archive episode.
OH HEY, FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE IS COVERING SCANIMATE, THANK YOU SO MUCH BEN, I LOVE SCANIMATE!
And yes I really gotta get those DVDs! Also may I recommend Ed Kramer's channel. He's an early CG Historian and he actually has commentary on how he did some of the logos. Fun fact: When they had to animate a spark, they actually had to use an actual sparkler! No joke!
I totally forgot this....uh, analog video synthesis? - existed pre digital effects. Thanks so much for this history lesson! I'm sure growing up I saw a lot of Scanimate renderings!
Do you know if any of the eight machines were shipped to the UK at all? Just a seen a few idents for UK stations (mostly ITV regions) and they're a lot sharper/clearer than the US ones because of the higher resolution of PAL.
Yes. One of the machines landed in London.
@@OddityArchive AAh, interesting. Than you!
@@Larry Machines were in operation in Japan, Australia, Luxembourg, London, New York, Hollywood, and Denver. I have no idea if the London machine still exists or if it was scrapped as part of our "throw away society".
@@abloogywoogywoo oh so thats why i knew what effects were in alot of the asian logos. anime and company logos
I think one of the systems that might have outcompeted the Scanimate would have the Quantel Paintbox. I think RetroGamerVGX has one.
It would make for an interesting episode, but I think the Quantel Paintbox was only designed to work in PAL and so I don't think it was used much in America.
Hi, I'm an old former TV audio tech, so my video knowlege is only through control room glass osmosis! Did the Scanimate tech ever evolve into pre-digital switcher effects? Some of the old Grass Valley (1980s/90s) tricks I remember looked a bit Scanimate inspired.
@@cjc363636 I don't know, Wikipedia says it's analogue. All I know about the Quantel Paintbox comes from memories of a series on the BBC from my childhood where they demonstrated it to the viewers and videos on RUclips from RGVX and Retro Man Cave!
I do know that it was entirely digital and apparently dates back to the 1970s (back when it would have been an incredibly expensive mainframe dedicated to digital video effects)
@@GeoNeilUK Cool! Quantel was the word in graphics back in the 1990s when I was in TV production.
The fantastic thing is how it’s all done in the analogue domain
As one of the people who requested this subject (and a proud owner of DVD-1) I was elated to see this episode! I think you handled it very well. Your history lesson was very informative, and it reminds me of what got me hooked on this channel in the first place.
I love hearing other people's perspectives on the audiovisual ephemera that fascinated me as a child, and learning about the things they find interesting as well. That's what brought me here, and that's what'll keep me watching. Thank you for this video, and I won't fault you if you add S*******e to your list of censored words. ;)
4:38 - Techmoan has a thing with oscilloscopes. I wonder if we'll get to see his Techbone Generator?
This seems similar to what Jerobeam Fenderson does with "oscilloscope music".
6:48 Ladies and gentlemen, CEEFAX ON DRUGS.
19:06 Oh my. That angry bird scanimate scares me at the end!
But congrats on 3,000 subs, Ben! Lookin' forward for Oddity Archive: Episode 200!
Here in the Philippines, ABS-CBN also used the Scanimate graphics package just for promos, idents and titlecards of several shows.
Nothing more disturbing than a disembodied Shaggy knockoff.
What about that fucking demon thing at the end of Turn-On?
@@AlternativeTelevision *Kill it!*
@@videotoblin with fire...
That WAS shaggy! CAESAR was used to animate Scooby Doo meets the Harlem Globetrotters (1972), and thats from a documentary on it.
One thing that you did not mention is that there are a lot of products that you can buy for simulating the Scanimate experience. They are made mostly by LZX and cost a lot of money.
Also, I say Hi to Ryan from Logopedia
The Scanimation episode is the history lesson I've wanted for a long time but didn't know it until it came out. Finally, a source for all those weird, too-old-for-computer-animation-but-still-look-computer-animated clips shown of company logos.
Thanks for this video. I remember scanimation used in Australia for TV stations when I was a kid.
Great episode...knew Scanimate was prevalent in vintage TV, but didn't realize just how much until now!
I've been secretly awaiting this installment since I first started watching this show. My life is complete.
me too!
"It's an episode that's 100% history lesson..."
Me: 'FUUUUUCK YESSSSSSS"
An observation: every time Ben says “New York City” I cant help but think of Pace Picante and ask myself “NEW YORK CITY??”
This usually doesn’t happen when other people say New York City.
A fascinating walk through history. For me the most memorable scanimations were from The Electric Company and Sesame Street.
The whole early bone thing reminds me of some modern animation software that uses bones, like Adobe Animate, Moho, and Toon Boom Harmony. Adobe Character Animator uses a lot of the same concepts, too.
Old Computers? Vintage TV? Cartoons? SIGN ME UP!
They used Scanimate on a local TV show in St. Louis, Missouri called "The Letter People".
I love the Scanimate so much, I'm so happy you covered this one!
The Children's Television Workshop used the Scanimate heavily on early Sesame Street and all over its show The Electric Company. Here's a trippy one from Sesame Street: ruclips.net/video/-9fn2tBnh9I/видео.html
As for whom the Bell Tolls?
It tolls for the people in Guatemala at the time.
So basically, this is the birth of motion capture, and would later be a major part of video game development.
8:09 WTF? And, 9:30 the only show to have been ever cancelled midway. I read about that back in the 90's. They sure broke out the ol' Hammond organ to play on the radio with a screen, tee-vee. 10:59 printed to videotape? 🤔 or *recorded* to video tape? 😉
14:09 OMG! As a kid in the very early 80's in LA I used to stay up late to watch Benny Hill on KCOP-13! I remember that station ID perfectly! Ah, memories!
Soap Operas were still using live organs, in the '60s.
There was one other TV show cancelled during its first (and only) episode, but it was in Australia. The show was "Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos", which aired in 1992 on the Nine Network. It was cancelled about 30 minutes in after Nine's owner was made aware of the program, saw a couple of minutes of it, and was disgusted by it. Apparently he phoned Nine's main reception desk in Sydney and demanded that they "get that f**king shit off my f**king TV station" (or words to that effect).
My grandfather had a couple of Philco televisions into the 90s. Probably because he had worked for Ford, and thus felt obligated to buy Philco sets. I've definitely seen some of the Scanimate radio station ads. Speaking of which, I know radio is not your forte, Ben, but I would love to see an OA on the long-dead Beautiful Music format. I bet a lot of people will find it interesting.
Yes, it kind of fits with Record Ripoffs. I hated that format with a passion when it was around, but now that it's long gone I miss it and listen to whatever music I can still find just to laugh at it. One of the signature stations of that format, KCTC was here in Sacramento. I heard Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" recently on the station that now occupies its frequency, and wished I could hear a Muzak version of that.
Seconded. The rise and fall of the Beautiful Music format seems like prime OA material.
I am subscribed to you since year or two ago yet I have not been recommended a video of yours for almost a year. And I was not even recommended this video I just realized how long I've been missing this content as I am cruel saying, ben's junk etc. smaller fare are not as interesting as grand topics into (my personal) unknown like this video turned out to be.
In moments the question I never posed "how did they get their effects in seventies etc." was answered, extensively, interestingly, through it's history and notable output I may have seen before.
Very good video given the characteristic of this channel's lower budget look and feel... Which is very delightful as it compliments the analog video intros and such.
Yet we never stop to think how much actual work it is to tape something to tape, rip it, edit it, tape it again possibly, and "scan" the tape video again for totally aesthetic end results. I do hope fascination with the analog does not die down as there is some marvelous stuff in analog space that is mechanical marvels beyond belief, when only mechanical component now is usually a fan... and even those are being killed off from our digital future.
you may want to look at one of tatsunoko's anime's Time Bokan, its opening aswell as the series use a system very similar t oscanimate, manipulating and transforming cels
They also used it in the original Tekkaman series too.
Also used on Gatchaman and at least one Sega game (astron belt)
Those are all worth a watch ngl
Little known fact: "Bone Generator" was the initial name for Viagra.
Interesting. Wasn't The Chyron Company doing computer generated tv logos and effects in the early 70's too? The Chyron company's technology was so groundbreaking and popular that it is now a generic term for the graphics, wipes, and effects for tv.
I'll see that Turn On dancer in my nightmares tonight. Thanks, Ben!
Congrats on reaching 30,000 subscribers Ben.
Odd and very creative channels like this one is what You Tube was all about 10 years ago! Now it's just twitter / TMZ.
Thank you for covering this! Scanamate is what got me into video graphics. Unfortunately, it's hard to create that look using digital software. I've discovered some tricks. Like making the graphic, then pointing the camera at the computer screen to create that glowing look. I get a thrill watching scanamate videos
WOW! You KNOW you have a bad show when you're cancelled halfway through the first episode...and don't even get to finish that!
This was very educational. Thank you!
All I could make out of the Lufthansa ad was "Allemania," the Spanish word for Germany.
I was always curious how some of these animated logos and those green-screen-looking Kool & The Gang effects were made back in the 70s before digital computer animation. Once I learned about Scanimate I immediately looked it up. As you mentioned, the information on this topic is (to this day) still limited; thank you for putting together such a pleasant, straightforward rundown of the history!
I couldn't quite wrap my head around the concept of an analog computer until you compared it to an analog synthesizer and it all suddenly made sense! Very interesting technology.
News from the future: previously unavailable, three episodes of the infamous "Turn On "show were released just last year!
Yesterday I was watching Mad Men and there’s a throwaway reference to Turn On in one of the 7th season episodes. Right as SCP gets their new computer, Harry mentions there was a show that was run by a computer but it got cancelled 11 minutes in.
Holy shit, RUclips actually sent me a notification of one of your videos. I thought I'd never see the day
Scanimate was also used in the '70s PBS series "The Letter People", a puppet show for kids about reading. It was usually used to animate on-screen text to demonstrate words in each episode, but the most impressive application of it was to animate the "Lucky Star" in this episode: ruclips.net/video/QCgs8akVBvs/видео.html
Really neat stuff!
The CAESAR machine.
A new Archive video means I get to enjoy it
You know your a geek when you would rather watch stuff like this instead of let's play and box openings videos on RUclips or even porn. Lol.
Never saw Scanimate used for porn in any way that I know of. Would've been cool for credits or trailers.
Just a joke and maybe a badly worded one. Just joking that while most guys are using the internet for porn I'm such a geek that I use the internet to watch videos like this. This channel is such an awesome channel with videos like this.
"Fill-in-the-blankwave fans will love it."
I'm surprised no one has turned Fill-in-the-blankwave into an actual "genre". Yet.
This was absolutely fascinating! I fall into the category of having seen "scanimation" but never knowing what it was/how it was done. Thanks, Ben, great episode!
Everytime I remember to buy his DVD, I don't have money. I need to buy it. Not just bc of the rad graphics, but bc scanimate motivated me to get into making graphics.
Gonna be honest, that motion capture suit is pretty easy on the eyes! What a Turn On.
oh wow, totally missed this one! great to see more coverage of scanimate
omg, thank you for this. I love scanimate so, so much!
I, for one, love your history lesson episodes. And congrats on 30k!
In 1992 the new tech Corporation release the video toaster which is a video production system software and it also had an animator called LightWave 3D where you could do very similar scanimate work on an Amiga computer
Yay, history lesson episode!
No, seriously, these are the best :D
Found out fairly recently, for those familiar with Tatsunoko's 1975 anime "Time Bokan", the Time Travel effects were done in Scanimate
the *bone generator*
This was one of the best episodes in a long time, I could have easily watched a video on this topic twice as long!
Argeed. Scanimate is so fascinating as an Primordial alternative to CG.
Te history lessons are the reason I started watching you. I watch you now because you're funny, too, but I started for history.
This being an American product it should be called Scanimate 4000
There's also all of the international usage which, in some cases, actually lasted far longer than in America. Brazil and Japan are some of the more notable cases, the former being most famously used by Rede Globo and the latter having reported usage up to the early 2000's.
Ooh, at 9:27 you show an excerpt from the newspaper where I grew up! Fun to see it was way back then
I didn’t know anything about this computer stuff before watching nor did I really care, but this is actually super interesting and I want to keep researching it. Thank you. Great video
4:04
That Johnny Cash song one piece at a time. Except Johnny Cash's doing car parts
7:17 It all comes back to CO, no Ben?
I always wondered how these types of animations were done, this was awesome to learn!
Thanks for putting this one out, Ben! Scanimate was before my time, but it’s still so fascinating to see computer animation in its infancy.
I love the history lessons. Im learning so much about things i never knew i cared about
14:36 I wasn't onboard with KB101 until that extra text raced in to save the day. Now I'm ready to rock out!
This was genuinely interesting! Well all your episodes are but this one in particular
Being quite familiar with Scanimate and computers since the mid-70s... this was a fabulous look at the origins of the technology... thanks.
HAHA! I think the guy at 11:40 and 11:42 is an old colleague of mine...
Mr Computer Image is cute though :3 I don't know why ABC didn't want to have him around.
Caesar is really fascinating to me just because of how reminiscent it is of some more modern animation techniques. Conceptually. it's practically identical to the way a lot of cheap flash cartoons are made!
The concept is similar to the animated pieces of paper so is coming out often; a lot of indie games are animated the same way
I'm only in my 30s but this will sound very boomer of me... I wish we had youtube or an internet that could handle videos when I was growing up...
Oh cool! Never heard of this before, thanks!
This just confused the heck out of my grasp on the history visual effects once again, darn.
Congrats on 30k only 70 more for that coveted silver play button
There's a third play button? I'm pretty envious of those that get far enough on RUclips to earn them, but there's one at 30,000 subscribers? I thought it was just 100,000 and 1 million.
@@XaneMyers re read my comment. 30k + 70k = 100k
Hey Ben! Glad to see you again. I was hoping that maybe, you would once make a video on this topic. And it was awesome. Now, a little footnote on Scanimate: It's apparent, at least it can be read on a Wikipedia page, that a Scanimate machine was bought and used by a TV network down here in Chile. I've got yet to land a job in there and ask some old technician to see by myself if that's true or not... Anyway, given that at the time ('78) we were under a regime that I won't disclose here (and that the network was the public, i.e. state-owned nationwide TV network) you can bet that it was used for some really creepy propaganda spots as late as '87 or '88. It's quite intriguing to know if the machine was ever down here, since thanks to then Senator Kennedy we were under an embargo, so we couldn't import weapons nor tech from the US, so if it was true, that would maybe put a little bit of shadiness over the issue... Well, I won't bore you any longer with this. Cool vid, dude! Keep it up!
Great video as always Ben, keep up the excellent work!
Some of this was downright terrifying. Great job, Ben!
The "Doctor Who" series of 1980 (18th season?) featured plenty of the typical Scanimate effects and nice analogue synth music.
Particularly the episode "The Leisure Hive" featured the Tachyon Recreation Generator that can "duplicate and manipulate organic matter" (not unlike the holodeck in Star Trek) which as a demo and torture made the moving body parts of a living person fly around on screen and could clone a person into an entire army of short-lived replicas. The employed ridiculously coarse moving fuzzy CGI certainly used Scanimate.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Leisure_Hive
ruclips.net/video/wxay8YsC7_Q/видео.html
ruclips.net/video/QiJeas9AeME/видео.html
Now I finally understand how the logo animation of old TV shows were made looking 3D or glittering without the cgi tech we have today.
i carnt belive that scanimate was used in flight of the navigator
As a person who dabbles in animation, this is actually really fucking cool.
A E S T H E T I C
Oddity Archive, for when the acid kicks in.
I never do this but... the tech/engineer at 16:28... wow... the stuff of nerd dreams. Great video. 👍
6:46
I am acquiring a taste for it already.
Congrats on 30k subs ;)
Those things were creepy. Look for: 'Vinheta TVS Rio (1976-1977)'.
I'm going to check those Brazilian TV's stations logos, and you should look for "programadoras colombianas" for spooky colombian TV's stations, haha!
to own 1 of the 8 machines that created like 90% of the vaporwave imagery would be nice