What the term covers
Computer animation means creating moving images with the help of a computer. That sounds simple, but it covers very different practices. A computer can help with two-dimensional drawings, calculate motion for three-dimensional models, drive a camera or generate patterns that no human hand would draw. The history is therefore a set of related streams, not one path.
This article provides the timeline. The people behind it are profiled in the article on animation pioneers, and the use of the technology in live-action film is discussed in the history of computer-generated imagery, so we keep to the broad sequence of events and techniques.
The 1950s and 1960s: experiments
The first films made with computers were short experiments, often made in laboratories. Some used analog equipment, which could control lights and shapes mechanically, and then digital machines, which produced images by plotting points and lines on a screen or a plotter and photographing the results frame by frame. Researchers at Bell Telephone Laboratories made some of the earliest known computer-generated films in the early 1960s, partly as scientific visualizations. Artists such as John Whitney, Stan VanDerBeek and others created abstract films in the same decade.
Because screens could not yet show color or smooth shading, these films were usually simple: lines, dots, patterns and geometric shapes, moving to music or in response to mathematical rules. The goal was usually to show what was possible.
Late 1960s and 1970s: three dimensions
The development of three-dimensional graphics changed what an animator could do. Instead of drawing every frame, a user could build a model of an object in the computer and then specify how it moved. The computer produced the images from different angles. Work at universities, especially at the University of Utah, produced important techniques for modeling and drawing surfaces. Short films in the early 1970s showing a human hand and a face demonstrated these ideas.
During this period, two broad approaches emerged:
- Keyframe animation. The animator sets important poses, called keyframes, and the computer fills in the frames between them. This idea comes from traditional hand-drawn animation, where senior artists drew key poses and assistants drew the in-between drawings.
- Procedural animation. Motion is produced by rules or equations, for example in simulating the way a flag waves or particles move, and the animator adjusts the rules rather than individual frames.
Both remain in use today, usually together. The calculations needed relied on the same computer simulation ideas that engineers used to model physical systems.
The 1980s: studios and rendering
The 1980s saw the creation of companies dedicated to computer animation, along with improved rendering, the process of calculating the final image from the model, lighting and materials. The ability to add shading, shadows, reflections and surface textures made images look much more solid. Short animated films from this decade showed that computer animation could tell a story with characters, not only demonstrate technology. One such film from 1986, about a pair of desk lamps, was nominated for an Academy Award for short animation and helped establish the credibility of the format.
Television also adopted computer animation for logos, advertising and title sequences, which provided funding for studios. The hardware was expensive, with specialized workstations used for modeling and rendering, and frames could take long periods to calculate. Animators often had to work around those limits by simplifying scenes, a feature of the period’s visual style.
The 1990s: feature-length films
In the 1990s, hardware and software were fast enough for longer projects. In 1995, Toy Story was released and is widely recognized as the first feature-length film made entirely with computer animation. Its success, and that of films that followed, led to many studios creating their own computer animation divisions. Techniques developed during the decade included improved character rigs, which are the internal skeletons and controls used to pose a figure, and software for simulating cloth, hair and water.
Meanwhile, the industries of film effects and computer games grew together, and the same ideas were applied in real-time form, where images are calculated as the user plays. Animation for games typically had to be much simpler in order to run on available hardware.
The 2000s onward
By the 2000s, desktop computers and consumer graphics cards could do work that previously needed specialized workstations. Software packages for modeling and animation became available to students, hobbyists and small studios, which broadened who could make animated work. Motion capture, in which the movements of real performers are recorded and applied to digital characters, became common for film and games, along with other methods for capturing faces. Hand-drawn two-dimensional animation also began to use computer tools for painting, coloring and compositing, so that the two traditions overlapped rather than competed.
Patterns across the decades
Reading the timeline as a whole, a few observations emerge. Technical advances typically appeared first in research settings and reached entertainment after several years. Cheaper computing allowed a shift from rare experiments to routine production. And the aesthetic of each period was shaped by what the machines could not yet do, from the geometric abstraction of the 1960s to the slick, smooth surfaces of the 1990s.
It is also worth being careful with claims of firsts. Many milestones, such as the first computer-animated film or the first character, depend on definitions, and early records are incomplete. The summary above gives the general order of events and avoids assigning every development to a single person or studio.