[QuadList] Scanimate - was CMX-600

[Skip Elsheimer]

I just digitized a bunch of Pepto Bismol commercials and have been watching
some old Electric Company episodes for another project, so I've been
watching a lot of the Scanimate in action. And have been a big fan, since I
was a kid.


There's a little fire brewing in my gut to take on this machine. Dave,
perhaps we should chat off-list about this.

Skip Elsheimer
www.avgeeks.com


On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Dave Sieg <dave at zfx.com> wrote:

> (CMX-600 discussion - SNIP)
>
> Speaking of huge relics that belong in museums...
>
> I've communicated with several of the QuadList members about this but
> thought I'd take the opportunity to throw this out to the group.  Its not
> exactly QuadTape related, but close.
> So you can fine me for going slightly off-topic but I'm broke anyway... :D
>
> I have the dubious honor of owning the original R&D Scanimate system.  It
> works.
> Its in my studio currently.  You can see more about it at my site
> http://www.scanimate.net
> Scanimate is an ANALOG computer that makes computer animation in real time.
> For about 10 years in the seventies, if you saw computer animation on TV it
> was
> generated by one of the eight Scanimates.  Lots of Sesame Street and
> Electric Company
> graphics, the stomach-swelling Pepto-Bismol "indiGESTion" spot, NBC Nightly
> News opens, etc.
>
> The Scanimates were produced by Computer Image of Denver, CO.  There were
> two at
> Dolphin Productions in New York City, two at Image West in LA (where I was
> CE for awhile)
> one at RTL in Luxembourg, one in Sydney, Australia at the 9 network, one in
> Japan, and
> the machine I have was in Denver then briefly at Interface in DC.  I have
> kept the machine in
> good working condition, and in fact recently did a job for buck.tv in LA
> where we shot the
> CRT directly with a RED digital cinema camera at 4K and got some amazing
> results.
>
> I am relocating to Asheville, NC and would like to find a better home for
> this machine.
> I have gotten offers from several museums, although none want to even pay
> to ship it.
> They all want to turn it into a static display of a dead machine.  I would
> like to find a home
> for the machine where it can still be operated, since there seems to be a
> resurgence in
> interest in all things analog, and in the work these systems produced over
> the years.
>
> To further complicate things, I was recently contacted by a guy who has all
> the parts and
> pieces (including manuals and spare parts!) to a complete Scanimate system
> in Denver.
> (Long story, I won't bore you with details here!)  He is selling his house
> and needs to get
> rid of it.  Much as I would love to get this machine too, I've already got
> one too many.
>
> Analog animation is of course a dead art.  The "animator" had to design a
> complex circuit
> and patch together phase-locked oscillators, ramps, summing amplifiers,
> bias pots, and
> multipliers to "build the animation".  Toggling the Initial/Final switch
> recycled and restarted
> the animation, which came out in real time and was recorded on Quad
> machines
> (SEE! I told you there was a connection, albeit slight!) and IVC-9000 2"
> helicals which
> allowed things to go down an embarrassing number of generations.  It helped
> that the
> "Look" that was in vogue was kind of glowey and saturated (that's really
> all it could DO!).
>
> That being said, once the animation was set up, there were thousands of
> knobs that could
> be tweaked to get the client (who usually sat breathing down your neck as
> you worked!)
> happy enough to sign off on it and walk out the door with a quad tape of
> his project.
> You just had to hope he didn't show up the next day requesting one SLIGHT
> tweak, since
> there was no way to even come close to doing the same animation from
> scratch again.
>
> So.. I know there are many of you in the same boat, having lovingly cared
> for and kept
> the flame alive on some ancient, once-glittering marvel of technology thats
> now so far
> beyond obsolete that its very existence is a minor miracle.  This stuff and
> the ephemera
> we talk about in this group needs to be kept alive somewhere.  The interest
> the Scanimate
> website has generated, and the continued sales of the DVDs I produced of
> its old work
> and the people who "animated" with them demonstrates that this old
> technology is far from
> dead or even dying.
>
> One of the groups I've had brief contact with is the Moog Foundation, which
> is building a
> museum in Asheville, NC to house some of the legacy of Robert Moog, the
> inventor of
> the Moog synthesizer.  There is a lot of commonality between the Moog and
> Scanimate,
> but the Foundation is having trouble getting funding for their own efforts,
> much less
> trying to expand to include Scanimate.
>
> So I'm throwing this out to this group to see if anybody has any brilliant
> ideas for the
> long term.
>
> **How do we protect and preserve some of this old technology that was the
> equivalent of the Apollo program in its own field back in the pioneering
> days?*
>
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Sieg, President, ZFx inc.
> www.zfx.com      www.linkedin.com/in/davesieg
> www.davesieg.com
> www.scanimate.net
>
>
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