Scanimate: The Origins of Computer Motion Graphics 

That machine HAS to be preserved and passed down to future generations who want to replicate it.

You have to love the aluminum foil technique at 6:44.

I'm obsessed with this era of motion graphics. When most people see this, they think it's dated and cheesy. I see it as warm and human, even though it's created by a machine. As a video editor, I get all my inspiration from the Image West demo reel, and the Cars music video. I'm trying to figure out how to master these type of effects with nu Skool editors. sometimes I create pics as frames, and ad a glow afterwards. since you love this as much as I do, what are some good plugins?

One interesting thing is that now we can mix analog and digital. Making the basic movement/effect in after effect, put the result on a CRT screen, point a camera to it and let the magic flow. Or, we can transpose this complete machine in the digital domine as an After Effect plugin, literally!

So basically a modular synthesiser but for visuals

I tried to build something like this myself when I was a young adult, using an array of old retired video switchers and vision mixers I scrounged at TV studios. The big mistake I made was that I tried to record the distorted signal directly on tape. Of course my VCR did not accept a distorted video signal and so the recording frequently failed. So first I thought I needed a professional VCR and switched from VHS to 3/4 inch. However the problem persisted. So I assumed a TBC might be the solution, but the TBC just tried to compensate the deliberate distortion thereby "destroying" my video art. It never occurred to me that I just needed to record the distorted image with a video camera from a screen. Unfortunately I had to give up on this when I married. My wife had no appreciation for this strange hobby. So I had to dismantle my studio. The good equipment went onto eBay, the rest to the junkyard.

Someone NEEDS to learn this machine from the masters - to keep this knowledge alive.

Absolute geniuses. Sticking the logo into the machine and it was 300% more amazing! Thanks for the vid!

For me as a young IT specialist, this is something absolutelly majestic. Now, there is nothing even remotely as magical as this. Everything is digital, perfect, precise, but it lacks the soul of these fascinating machines.

The video synthesizer I used was the Rutt-Etra. It was an infinitely simpler and primitive analog video synthesizer. During 1977-78, I used it at the Ontario College of Art to produce video art. I still have my own setup diagrams. I used it with audio oscillators, video cameras, VTRs, video and audio mixers, etc. I also used a fax machine to manipulate images.

I've always been an avid lover of that type of graphic motion. I grew up with it and have been trying to find the source of it for the longest time. I have found 5 things here in youtube that I have questioned from the longest time since I was a boy.

I've spent entire days trying to emulate that Scanimate or celluloid on film look. You'll get 99% there & scratch your head trying to figure out that last missing 1% of the equation. Well friends, it's film gate. That's what you're missing. Throw it all into a single comp & slap the tiniest of wiggle expressions on there with a random evolution.

As someone who is inspired by these retro designs and effects and hoping to one day apply it to future work, it brings me a great deal of joy to finally know the actual term for these types of effect that were so Synonymous with late 70s early 80s commercials and Television specials as well as to also know the people behind it who made it part of our culture. Thank you Roy and Dave for preserving this special piece of our history and Thank you LinkedIn for such an excellent video on the wonders of Scanimate!

I had just been watching the Computer Image Corporation showreel from 1975 and then this showed up, imagine my surprise! Absolutely wonderful to watch and I'm in awe of this hardware and its beautiful image creating capabilities.

4:02 - This is truly spectacular. I'd love to see a step-by-step of how they scanimate video like this.

It's a minor detail but I love that they can effortlessly & precisely integrate the output of a 21st century computer into a Scanimate workflow through VGA

Its amazing these guys played this machine like an instrument.

I love the fact " once we change the patch cords we can’t duplicate that tomorrow ". I agree it is beautiful

This is so beyond awesome. I remember when I was about 12, and I saw the neighbor's dad's oscilloscope in the basement, and wanted to play with it... I wanted one. I still want one. I also remember liking the way the image shrunk when you turned off the TV. That and the freaky ghost image that stayed on the screen afterwards from the tube. I used to turn the TV off and on just to see that. Until I got yelled at.

WOW! This brings me much needed closure .

Nick, you gave me a great idea at 6:24. I, like you, am obsessed with these graphics, and I'm trying to achieve this look digital editors. But you hit the nail on the head at about 6:24. I made a video with this grid like scanamate style, then what I did was use my cell phone camera (can not wait until I can get a professional one) and shot the video, as it played on the computer. Even with the low quality cell phone camera, it had that glowy look to it. Thanks for the idea.

I wish it was still a World when a regular guy could just fall into something like that, everythings so much more complicated now

What the presenter is missing with the newer stuff is the randomness of the analog equipment, the breadth of results one can get from simply dicking around with knobs and connections, the happy accidents which result.

I'm actually curious about the other elements in some of these clips. The artwork taken into the machine is monochrome. I understand you can change the color of the output, but how did they deal with actual images. For instance you have a product, say, a shampoo bottle. It's sitting there in the middle. It may have a glowing outline with a starfield in the background. How do you deal with the actual photographs or artwork. For instance also radio station logos, they look all airbrushed and what not, but then have the animation. Are the actual full-color artwork and/or photographs something added after the fact (or before)? So maybe the shampoo bottle in the example is actually overlayed with chromakey, but then the glowing outline is made off of the scanned monochrome image? Much more interested in how they get these other cool effects, where maybe in some big production they use animation cameras and it's all totally non-computer.

This is visual Techno. This is a visual representation of what I see when I listen to the stuff from the 80s and early 90s that came from The Belleville Three, UR, Drexcya, et al.

Amazing. Loved this for so long. Glad to have finally found out the name: Scanimation

What if someone combined Anime with Scanimation? Scanime!

I think this was back when Machines worked for Humans!

Wow, how awesome!!! I know how you feel, bro. There's something about the 80's... it's called NOSTALGIA!!! Great video, thanks man!!

15:22 "The easier it gets though, the farther away you get from what's really going on." True for many things in life.

this machine is from before i was born, but i am so fascinated by it, it is so incredible i just wish i could play with it myself.

I remember my brief stint working at a NY company that leased two Scanimates. It was always amazing to see the masters at work.

This machine is very cool, I wish someone went and studied the machine and made a clone of it so people can buy it and mess around with it because it would be very cool to mess around with knobs and buttons and hook random things up to it to see what things I can get out of it

them filming the screen suprised me. I thought that was just the janky way to capture the CRT look nowadays.. learned a lot from this video but more importantly learned that I know a lot less than I thought I did😂

This! Is! Awesome! Pure inspiration for a lot of the stuff I do now. I grew up with some of this stuff still happening in the late 80s. It has such a beautifully different type of ingenuity and beauty. Glad to see this being explored and preserved in your video. P.S. That foil technique!!! I need an excuse to try it.

Outstanding stuff. Beautiful imagery

Wow I feel enlightened. This is cool stuff

Absolutely beautiful and aesthetic

Awesome flashback guys!

Love this! The closest thing that somehow perfectly emulated this technique in the modern era is the mock opening news title sequence of Paramore's 'Rose Colored Boy', perfectly executed by Director Warren Fu, love his retro blueprint in his works!

Curious... how many were built? I know personally of three, but I’m guessing maybe ten ?? We’re there any hardware variants, or did they all have the same bundle of oscillators, amplifiers, filters etc...? 11:53 is so true... we always had a ‘tweaker’ in our pockets... but remember to restore unity before you left the building ! The shot at 13:03 is sooo familiar ! Brings great memories back... the frames were rarely pushed back in to the racks !

Beautiful..! I had no idea anything like that ever existed. KK is right. Provisions must be made to preserve that machine. Thanks for signing a light on this obscure bit of nerd history....

This essentially used video signals as a canvas to make art on.

Let's design this with Field Programmable Analog Array, PSOC and GreanPak 7004 controlling a CRT. This is gonna be an awesome project.

Just mind blowing.

This is a treasure

Anyone knows what the song at 9:30 is please ? Can’t find it anywhere :(

7:50 acceleration, deceleration and anticipation in animation go way before this awesome guys

Wish someone would build this as a piece of software just like we have guitar amps and synth emulators.

There's nothing like this... kinda sad seeing it die out.

The spanish public TV, TVE used this thing for: 1976 TV broadcast intro (there no was 24h TV) 1982 TV broadcast intro (if You Search Cortinilla TVE 1982 BetaRip you'll find it) 1983 ads bumpers (used in the 2 TV Channels until 1987 and used in 1984 in The french TV TF-1)

He's response was the same when I found about these analog live generated motion graphics. I just felt that all digital stuffs were hokes of the originals. But who am I to judge.

Could anyone tell me the name of the soundtrack at 3:51? :)

i remember 1979/1980 video effects by RTL PRODUCTIONS in luxembourg they had one......wonderful machine !!

This is awesome

This is fascinating.

Fascinating.

2:19 J.R. "Bob" Dobbs reference!

Wow! I wonder how difficult it would be to build another one as a backup.

Bro genius ❤

Given the love for the hand-on aspect of controlling the equipment, I suppose I'll get shot for suggesting this, but what would be neat to me would be to create versions of this with motor-driven rotary and slide pots, switchbars, etc., VCOs and ADCs to record and playback all the manual figgiting around. Do an image generation segment, you have it all recorded and repeatable on demand. If the setting recording is itself analog, then you have something like a sampler. If it's digitized then it's even alterable in a preplanned way. Then the recording/playback machine becomes as complicated as the image generator.....oh well.

I still do similar kind of effects and film them on camera as rear-projection for my cartoons = ) Never thought it was a thing way back then....

Why are you holding your phone the wrong way at 15:50?

Boy give us the schematics we need to put this thingie onto a chip.

really cool.

Someone should create a motion graphics software inspired by this kind of workflow.

I want to learn how to use this along with Ampex Digital Optics (ADO 100/1000) and old Grass Valley 300 switchers.

This level of rad is off the hook!

cant they input the video signal through the RGB signal lines of the crt instead of through a camera?

*11:00** IS WHERE JONTRON GOT HIS INTRO*

that aesthetics are amazing....

I heard about the machine, but I did not know that colonel Sanders was involved!

Justice - DVNO video did a nice job emulating this.

How did they scan the logo into the machine?

Is Dolphin Productions using with computer?

This is how the 1970s computer graphic machine has revealed. 😉

By the late 1980s, 3D computer graphics took over as the world know today.

I stumbled over this video because i love video games, but for some years now their digital and continuoslye evolving graphics did not amaze me as much as they obviously do with most people. Everything develops only in one direction: more perfect, more details, more polygons, more high-res. I know there are many games that feature non-realistic graphic styles like comics etc. but even they often look to perfect and soul-lacking to me. So now i have seen this video and i'm just wondering if these kind of effects could ever be also used in a digital video game? I don't know if that makes sense in a technical way but i would find that really interesting and refreshing :)

If that isn’t the coolest machine then I don’t know what is!

I love the DuMont logo on the monitor. That has to be a joke, right? I actually bought a DuMont color tv at the lakeside rummage sale in 1993 and it was ancient at that time, and so heavy that my 14 year old self couldn't carry it to the car alone.

This totally helped me understand the thought process behind After Effects and why some stuff seems so unintuitive. Seems like they were trying to emulate this analog technology. Similar to how Photoshop emulates analog photo development. Fascinating stuff. The procedural animations are mind blowing

Who the fuck would dislike this? My like has brought this to 666 likes!

Does anybody know of a software that you can use to make this 80s animation “look” ?

2023 needs an emulation of this Device before it’s gone forever

It almost feels a bit like a modular synthesizer for video. A video moog.

How about musical part of it? Iis it made on Synthezator? t is interesting as well.

Imagine the company that made the Scanimate Will get refounded and introducing a Scanimate 3 or 2 I don’t know

I need the open source for this ! 😂❤

I want one. so. badly.

8:03 The captions should say sine not sign

20th century intangible cultural heritage... This is my child dream...

I would take it on no doubt 😉

epic

The epitome of “Retro”

how the graphics gets to film ? I mean 70 mm or 35 mm film reel ?

(upbeat music)

So the answer to a problem is hardware not software as it has always been. This is why now we can do so much in video, graphics and audio because finally the hardware for normal consumers has caught up to software from 10 years ago. This is also why consumers will always be behind professionals because the price of hardware takes years to reach the masses.

why no one think audio input?

really hope the equipment gets donated to some type of space where u can rent the use of these machines

Know what would be awesome? Stranger Things title using Scanimate!