1972: A Computer Animated Hand
Sunday, September 9, 2018 at 11:00PM By Tim Brayton
The Film Experience is going to look at the films of 1972 all month in preparation for the Supporting Actress Smackdown celebrating that year's nominees. It was a strong year for cinema in general, but in the history of screen animation, it's nothing less than one of the single most importany years ever. For it was in 1972 that a 27-year-old PhD student at the University of Utah named Edwin "Ed" Catmull, aided by fellow student Fred Parke, laboriously created a wireframe model of his own left hand, applied a series of polygonal shapes to it, and made it move along the joints between those polygons.
That might sound dully, deadeningly technical, and in a very real way, it is: Catmull and Parke were working in the storied computer lab of Dr. Ivan Sutherland, which was focused on pure research and industrial applications. Catmull himself was the only member of the lab with a strong interest in the filmmaking possibilities of their technology, which is likely why it fell to him to create what history has come to regard as the fist computer-generated animation of a natural, organic object.
