“Pencil Test” by Susman
Conference:
SIGGRAPH Video Review:
Track:
- 32
Title:
- Pencil Test
Director(s):
Company / Institution / Agency:
- Apple Inc.
Description:
Last year at SIGGRAPH, Apple’s Advanced Technology Group decided that it was time for Apple to do a film for SIGGRAPH. Our primary objective was to produce a 3-D animated short entirely on Apple equipment. The first two months were spent developing the script, creating the storyboards and designing the character. At this point our ideas migrated to the computer where we began building our models. Due to a lack of software support for splines, we needed to convert the main character from one curved surface to several rigid, polygonal pieces. For animation, we used a version of Twixt (revived once again) running on the Macintosh. Its command line interface certainly frustrated our click- and-drag animators. Meanwhile, we pulled together in-house code for rendering. Since we have “a few” Macintosh computers lying about, we built a network renderer to take advantage of the extra cycles. The sound effects and score were composed, arranged and synchronized using MIDI on the Macintosh.
