1985 - Historic (Hilariously Ugly) early PC animation

[19felinefancy]

Dear god in heaven, give a warning before you start the video. Fucking almost blew my speakers.

[pghg022]

...and then southpark was born

[Raveninety9]

I think the animation is good its just the low bit graphics software that you guys probably don't like but the animation is well adjusted to the background in a way that fits in with the rest. Also the music is wayyyy too loud and unnecessary.

[xrror]

Thanks for sharing this, and having an awesome sense of humor for people who don't get the historical significance of it!

This vid is awesome just for the raw kludge of techniques used to make the final result! The best part is after all that it's used as a US Army vid. Love it!

[miamivicepastels83]

the music that starts at 2:09 reminds me of the music they used to play during the showcase showdowns on the old price is right

[spavatch]

Cute in it's specific way ;)

[kaveenr1]

requirements :

Windows 7

Intel Core I7

4 GB Ram

2 Gb Vga (nvidia)

[EllieAsksWhy]

I realized how much work went into producing that when I saw that the credits roll from 2:14 to the end!

[APT420]

gives me a headache.

[TMeeks01]

@APT420

LOL! I know what you mean.  The canned music of the 80's was just plain awful.

[emailmemrstara]

What the hell did you just teach me?

[TMeeks01]

@emailmemrstara

Probably nothing.

[DGMRuadeil]

@emailmemrstara BASIC.

[SethiXzon]

I now know that men in the US Army are actually children.

[haitherebainow]

i read (Historically Ugly)

[TMeeks01]

@haitherebainow

Works for me! LOL!

[calculus400]

You animated all this using only GW-BASIC and overlays?? That's brilliant! :)

[TMeeks01]

@calculus400

Thanks!

The Mindset was a PC Clone that allowed you to overlay live or taped video with computer graphics. The typewriter scene was done with live video as where the scenes using dollhouse furniture and miniatures. The schoolhouse scenes were taped.

One of the tricks we used in those days with GW-Basic was to resize and move an image on the screen to reveal only parts of the original JPG, creating a sliding effect. I used that effect in the JVC Video Titler application.

[FlameSquid]

what the hell is he hes really ugly

[TMeeks01]

@FlameSquid

It's an AGE thing. Years ago, when you were a baby, computers didn't have hard drives. They used Floppy drives and in this case 5-1/4" hard drives. They first floppy drives were even :LARGER.

[FlameSquid]

@TMeeks01 ya but they can still draw and stuff ok

[TMeeks01]

@FlameSquid

The reason I didn't continue in animation is that I CAN'T really draw OK. When this was done, the colors and resolution were low enough that one's artistic skills were less important than one's programming skills. Once the resolution and colors improved it became an artist's game and I became a fan rather than a participant.

[htfkid2000]

BY THE ARMY FOR THE ARMY >_<

[TMeeks01]

Thanks! He's aged and long past keeping up with his animated brothers and sisters. But, he IS lovable, isn't he?

[windson7]

no... really.... this was for the army

[RobloxMatthewbe]

Turns out, Tom Meeks was our first Animator.

Really people, give him an applause.

[TMeeks01]

Thank you for your kindness. But, many people were doing very expensive rendered animations by computer before this was produced. And, a whole group of us had been animating in real time with the Datamax UV-1 with Tom DeFanti's ZGRASS language since 1979-80. The uniqueness of this was simply the real-time lip-sync animation and live/computer overlays permitted with the Mindset Computer's hardware.

Search YouTube for ZGRASS, Tom DeFanti, Jane Veeder, Copper Giloth to see the REAL pioneers.

[TheWilliams104]

i thought this was for kids, till i saw the credits

[TMeeks01]

In one sense is WAS made for kids. Armies are young. That, coupled with the fact that very, very few recruits had ever even SEEN a computer probably prompted this approach and the simplicity of the script.

[olafurmagnus]

lol designed for the US army . they really need to be talked to like children?

[TMeeks01]

Video for training, itself, was relatively new at the time this video was created. And, the simplicity if the scripts had more to do with production costs and technical limitations than the intelligence of the audience. Then again, is WAS a government production.

[TMeeks01]

@olafurmagnus

LOL!

Fortunately, I didn't right the script or pick the music. I simply created the animation.

[Qodaet]

@olafurmagnus I bet many of them failed to understand it.

[ittmi]

I'm glad we don't use the term "computer graphics application software program" in everyday language. Today, we'd just call it an "Animation program" or "Flash". "Application software program" is VERY redundant.

[TMeeks01]

Just as the first automobiles were called "Horseless Carriages" all new technologies struggle to find descriptions that make a connection between the familiar and the new. Later we just said, "Car".

[derpenstein]

Yeah but would we call it a "horseless carriage self-powered wheeled automotive conveyance" ?

[FocusOnLiberty]

It was what is was and people called it what they called it. It may have been clunky; but, history is full of clunky. And, people with a sense of history and progress take reality for what it was. Others, who evaluate the past in light of their limited experience in the present will not. That's just the way it is and has always been. Try reading a book printed in the 1600s.

[derpenstein]

Okay you win, it's not redundant.

[katamishi]

ALL I DO IS DRAW!

ROFL

[narozzz]

Why is the music so seventies if this is from 1985? This sounds like it should an infomercial about polyester.

[DiscoveryScopes]

It was for the government... which probably meant that people in charge wanted to use royalty free music. We're lucky it wasn't 1870's music! :)

[derpenstein]

All music in every video production sucked complete ass until about 1993.

[TMeeks01]

One of my favorite responses because it is OH SO TRUE!!!! LOL

We didn't have thousands and thousands of creative independents using DAWS to produce low-cost licensed music. We had to rely on expensive (but awful) libraries on vinyl.

[ab8jeh]

He appears to be copyrighted. Get some selotape!

[MovieTristan]

o my god.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT DA HELL

[ciklprr]

"Made For the US Army"

[Thegamer5150]

programs haven't changed much its just has new skins like I go back to some windows 98 training vids and most of the stuff back then is almost still the same 10+ years later

[Zeesy]

OOOOOOOO SKA!!!!!!!

[baneskrbic]

For army?WTF!

[juzz0]

1:56-2:00 evil eyes...

that 'computer graphics application software program' is such an egomaniac!

love the soundtrack.

[JaXNashphun]

i know some friends who need to watch this video, maybe itll help them understand computers :P

[templepriest]

Tom - you need to sue the folks behind SpongeBob right away!!!!

Obviously Floppybob Squarepants preceded him by decades

Thanks for the look back!

David

[zaxtervid]

It's not that ugly at all. Really. I think you did a fine job. Wat's ugly is the music and that annoying VO.

[TMeeks01]

LOL! I agree! But, that was the responsibility of the producers... and, remember they were the lowest bidders for the project! :)

Canned music was standard fare for government videos of the day.

[turtlecatpurrz]

What do you mean WAS? I'm pretty sure it still IS! But thank you, this was an amazing piece, just for historical value, and yes, it is hilariously bad.

[Borin81]

the US army? why did they do this movie?

[TMeeks01]

It was part of a series introducing various aspects of computing. Remember, this was 1984 and PCs were still a new concept to a lot of people.

[Optimus6128]

It actually seemed too impressive for being programmed with gwbasic and concerning the year it was released. Though it's the first time I read about the Mindset computer. And if the hardware is as capable as Amiga, I guess it helps here.

[TMeeks01]

The Mindset pre-dated the Amiga by some time. But, the hardware had some impressive capabilities that actually wasn't completely implemented when I came to them with the idea of making a version of the machine for video animation. The overlay functionality was in the custom chip; but, external jumper wires had to be soldered to the motherboard to make it work. The overlay controller was an external device.

[johnnecron]

but the amiga outlasted both the st and the mindset.

I think the amiga truly was the masarati of pcs in the 80s

[TMeeks01]

While I don't want to dismiss the value of the Amiga, the reason why the Mindset failed to survive had more to do with marketing position than actual capabilities.

In was initially introduced as a premiere game machine and all the marketing was directed in that direction. By the time they realized that it was too expensive to be a successful game machine they were 25 million in debt.

[poopskinTheLiar]

How could they fight a war that hadn't even started yet?

[khorsia]

Given the fact that this machine was released well before the Amiga or the Atari ST series, the animation presented is pretty spectacular.

[TMeeks01]

Thank you for a great compliment! You made my day!

[khorsia]

I'm glad I could! :-) I have been a bit of a connoisseur of computer graphics and animation (producing my first "animation," if you could even CALL it that, LOL, on a DEC PDP-8 when I was about 11 on the EVER-advanced vector graphics, ahaha!). I am *assuming* you are a Mindset owner - where can someone GET one of these marvelous machines and the software that runs on one?

[sunspot42]

Yeah, it's stunning for a PC compatible engineered in the early '80s and released in 1984. The Amiga and ST would have been hard pressed to do better anytime before 1988.

[vapourmile]

@sunspot42 Good point, in fact, the Amiga didn't really have any commercial credibility for professional projects until the video toaster in 1990, but by that time there was a lot of competition in the field. Not only that, but many of the Amiga's later developments, such as RTG, where an attempt to retrofit the Amiga with the features that were beginning to give the PC a lead that was no longer really in any doubt.

[brigzy]

any i dea what the music is?

[TMeeks01]

I didn't actually the editing. But, I'm sure it was from one of those canned sound tracks that became popular back then.

[brigzy]

ah right.. thanks anyway..

[cookiect2003]

BASIC!!!

[TMeeks01]

GWBasis to be specific.

[brickman409]

Its not that bad

[kreeddem]

I almost smashed my screen up watching this, to all of us beer drinkers, dont watch this on a hang over.

[klokwrkblu]

Any idea what would have been the program used to make something like that?

I want it!

[UltraBibendum]

"I taught you everything you know about application software, didn't I?"

Wouldn't that make you an instruction program? Lying bastard.

Wonderful animation, I almost couldn't believe that's from 1985. Looks like something made in kidpix and flash.

[TMeeks01]

Except that KidPix and Flash would be more sophisticated! :)

[Membrane556]

Pretty impressive considering it was animated real time on an 81086 which wasn't a particularly fast cpu for even for 1985.

Though I read the mindset had a pretty powerful graphics chip not quite like the Amiga's but kinda like GIME in the COCO3 or the Chipset in the Atari ST.

[TMeeks01]

The CPU was just under the restrictions for export to China back in those days. It was one of the few 80186 consumer computers.

[sunspot42]

The Mindset PC's chipset was supposedly more powerful than the ST's, and sported advanced features such as genlocking. It did support the same resolutions as the STs, such as 300*200 by 16 colors and 640*400 monochrome. Tramiel had made an attempt to buy Mindset, and when they wouldn't sell he setout to engineer his own machine with similar specs, though based on the more powerful Motorola 68000.

[grinick]

lol redundancy

[colorznatalius]

i don't think it's ugly at all...a lot of animations made nowaday are crappier than this...this one has a cool style on it.

[abnormal88DAN]

hahahahahahahahahahahahhahha

[ZXRulezzz]

Computer graphics application software program =)

[untseac]

It sure was ugly but I thought it was pretty impressive for it's time and very informative too. At this moment I'm working at a thesis about speculative execution based on STM for parallel computers so it's fun to know more about what was being done in the mid 80's (I don't know much about 80's computers). By the way I was born in 1985 =p

[TMeeks01]

Thanks for understanding the time perspective of the work. Parallel computing it was NOT! LOL!

This might be an interesting fact for you. The Mindset was built around an 80186, not the more prevelant 80286. And, it had not hard drive. This put it just under the export controls limiting computers going to China. So, I understand, the Chinese bought quite a few of them.

[joecassara]

Tom: You should give yourself a lot more credit in the video's description. That's no way to introduce your own work. This was great.

Did you use Lumena to draw static images, then animate in GW-BASIC? A page outlining the creative process would be most insightful!

[TMeeks01]

Thanks, Joe. I appreciate your comment.

I'm amazed that you knew about Lumena! And, yes, I used Lumena as far as I can remember to create the pieces for the animation. And, I absolutely used GW-Basic... even after I had vowed never to use Basic again after learning ZGRASS. But, that's another story. :) The process was interesting; but, space to communicate it is limited. I don't know if there is a graphics history site where it could be documented or not.

[PCtactikal]

dam long to laod WHY!!!!?

[cartoonfan1920s]

The animation is quite well done for the time, reminds me of the DOS instructional videos by the Video Professor made around 1992...

[TMeeks01]

By 1992 there were a lot of options for animation. The Amiga had been introduced and the PC Clone performance was at least a little improved. The problem was that any PC based animation almost always had to be pre-rendered because of the lack of a custom chip to move the bits in hardware rather than software.

[doomsayer333]

And it's for the army! i tought for a sec it's for child... damn xDDDDDDDD

[doomsayer333]

This can't be from '85!!!

[TMeeks01]

There were better pre-render systems in 1985 based on Compaq and Targa. But, there were really only two machines capable of doing real-time animation. The first was the ZGrass, which I also owned, and the second was the Mindset. The Amiga wasn't introduced until a bit later than this. And, even that mostly relied on pre-rendering animation.

[Stopmotionist]

What's the ZGrass? I've never heard of it.

[TMeeks01]

Zgrass was a special graphics language developed by Dr. Tom DeFanti at the University of Chicago, Circle Campus.

It was a derivative of GRASS. Here is an explanation of both.

If you search for 'Tom Defanti" or "ZGRASS" you can find some WIKI articles on both.

[Stevenup7004]

Is this real time or prerendered?

[TMeeks01]

It was done in real time. Not pre-rendered. The Mindset had an 'overlay' box that could combine live or taped video with the graphics from the Mindset. Some scenes, like the schoolroom were pre-recorded on videotape. But, most, like the doll-house furniture and the typewriter used live video with a programmed animation.

[itsabomberscope]

Wow, nice animation actually. I just read that the mindset machine was made by two ex-Atari engineers. The Atari ST which arrived a year lately had almost the identical graphics capability.

[TMeeks01]

Two teams split off from Atari. One team created the Mindset and the other team the Amiga. The design of the graphics systems went in completely different directions. The design goal of the Mindset was to be able to perform highly interactive games using a custom chip and simple bit-mapped graphics. It was, at its heart, an overpriced game machine. After the collapse of Mindset, Ajay Chopra, one of the Mindset designers co-founded Pinnacle Systems.

[Stopmotionist]

The Mindset had the same graphics capabilities as the ST, didn't it?

[TMeeks01]

The custom video chipset was quite a bit more powerful than that of the ST. But, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the same engineers had a hand in designing both. The Mindset team came out of Atari.

[Stopmotionist]

I would be very surprised if it was the same engineers, considering that Tramiel had a team working on the ST before he had any connection with the company. Tramel Technology and all that.

[TMeeks01]

What I meant by 'same' was that both groups had come out of Atari and had worked together there. I was a little unclear in my wording. :)

[sunspot42]

Tramiel had made an attempt to buy Mindset, but they turned him down. In hindsight, they should have taken him up on his offer. He went off and cooked up a 60000-based machine with virtually identical specs.

[DoctorScissors]

Awesome

[TMeeks01]

Thank you. :)

[allboutk]

if the person who made this had to write out every single line of code, they must have had mad haxx skillz

[MatchstalkMan]

Is that a 5 1/4" or an 8" computer graphics application software program diskette? :-)

I still dry-heave at the acoustic coupler used in "Wargames"...

[AMG93]

Yeah it's a 5 1/4 :)

[SaganAppreciationSoc]

"Application". One of the most useless words to infect the computing world. Next to "software program".

[crocz]

OMG, it's a acomputer-grpahics-application software-program :D

[mad4mater]

EWW! UGLY! LOL!

[TMeeks01]

There ARE benefits to missing the first draft of new technology! Aren't you glad you missed that one! :)

[ziva80]

Wow, that's actually very good for 1985. I almost bought a Mindset. Then I heard about something called an 'Amiga 1000' that was being released later that year. After seeing the demos for it at my local ComputerLand(!), I was so impressed that I had to pre-order one. Fun times!

[TMeeks01]

Both the Mindset Team and the Amiga Team came from Atari at about the same time. The Mindset came out first and used an 80186. The founder of Pinnacle Video was one of the lead designers (or THE lead designer). So, the concepts lived on.

[ziva80]

So, did the army pay well? (Saw your name in the credits.)

[shortyblackwell]

I remember "computer class" in High School (1984). You had to be a super geek to understand it- all it was was that you put algebraic stuff in, and if you were lucky, and did it right, a dumb picture would come up. Times sure have changed! (

[TMeeks01]

They sure have! :)

This animation, for instance, was created with huge multidimensional arrays holding the image name and duration, in frames, for each and every lip position. Then depending on the computer's speed, we'd loop so many cycles per frame count. It was pure math.

[magicianspirit]

Wow, by doing the lip movements it sounds like you made it a LOT harder on yourself! Much easier to just do animation with a voice over like the much older film here on YT "Computer Technology Throughout History"

[TMeeks01]

The whole point was to see if I could do lip-sync animation with a PC Clone.

[shortyblackwell]

"floppy disk"

har har

[TMeeks01]

Not only a Floppy; but, a 5-1/4" Floppy!! :)

The Mindset didn't have an available hard drive at the time. And, 3-1/2" drives were yet to be introduced! This is true ancient history! :)

[LoparXL]

Actually, the 3.5" floppy was already out by then. It was used on the first Apple Macintosh the year earlier, as far as I know. That's a cheesey, but spiffy little video. Thanks for showing it to us.

[Futurebobbers]

It's no Shrek, but that's a pretty impressive animation for a mid '80s computer. What was it for, though? Are modern soldiers put through an intensive MS Paint training course?

[TMeeks01]

Selected soldiers could be put through a wide variety of computer courses. In this case, it was simply an overview of the general class of Computer Application programs. Computers were so new that many soldiers had never even seen one. This video has been cut down to just include the animation. The entire video is much longer.

[ailahusky]

Any possibility of posting the rest?

[SynaMax]

That was made for the U.S. Army?! ROFL!!! That was hilarious!  Thanks for posting! :-D

[TMeeks01]

Your government dollars at work! I pulled out just some of the work I did on the project. Seeing the actual equipment they were talking about is equally hilarious! LOL

[CopeML]

1 simple word "Nostalgia"

[TMeeks01]

Thanks for viewing and rating! :)