Tron contained genuine CGI animation backed up with large amounts of compositing tricks based around matte effects and backlighting this made the live action footage look as though it had been digitally processed. The biggest example of this, however, came when Disney produced an entire feature film based around the look of eighties arcade games: Tron.
One sequence in Hitchhiker’s Guide portrayed an intergalactic war as an early video game, a theme drawn upon by other animators: for example, in 1982 a British public information film used Space Invaders-like imagery to advise audiences on safe driving.
An added plus was that the animation could get away with being a little bit jerky… Created using litho film and coloured gels, these sequences suggested digital graphics simply by combining glowing primarily-coloured images with a black background.
Often used as a visual motif in kids’ science fiction-themed cartoons (witness the cel animated wireframes in the opening sequence to Transformers) this approach was put to good use by Rod Lord’s animation work on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxytelevision series from 1981. These are all extreme examples during this period, it was more common for digital animation to be emulated using hand-drawn techniques. In this improvised effort Max was portrayed by a man in a shop-bought mask, while the moving backdrops – in the original series, an example of genuine digital animation amongst the pseudo-CGI – were replaced with somebody offscreen wiggling a bit of corrugated metal about. In 1987 an unidentified signal hacker managed to replace two television broadcasts with a mildly disturbing video of a home-made Max Headroom show. There has even been an incident in which a budget imitation of CGI itself received a budget imitation. Shot under ultraviolet light, this recreated the luminescent green-on-black effect of primitive CGI.
Early on in the movie we see what appears to be a wireframe model of Manhattan in actual fact, a physical model was built for this sequence, with reflective tape placed along the edges of the buildings. Max Headroom was created at a time when 3D CGI animation was desirable, but not always affordable if the budget did not allow it, then the crew had to fake computer animation in front of the camera.Īnother good example of this can be found in the 1981 film Escape from New York. This process seems somewhat surreal today, in our brave new world of Maya, Xtranormal and Blender. The crew even added deliberate faults to the “animation” – such as the stammer which became Max’s trademark – to complete the effect. Half of the frames from the footage used in Max Headroom were removed in production, resulting in a juddery look to suggest animation shot on twos, and Frewer was bluescreened in front of a basic digital backdrop. But although he was conceived by the animators Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel (of Cucumber Films fame) Max himself was portrayed by actor Matt Frewer, placed into latex makeup and a shiny costume and set amidst a range of technological tricks.
I’ve come across people who believe that Max Headroom, the Channel 4 character from the Eighties, was a genuine piece of computer animation.