RetroHack - 1981 Apple ][e Animation Shows “Days of computer time in just seconds!”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbxJajIGBWo[/youtube]
I loved my Apple ][e. It was the first computer I ever did any kind of graphics work on and seeing one warms my nerdy heart to this very day. So, I was glad to come across this clip from a guy who hooked up a time-lapse rig to his monitor in order to “render” animation using Apple’s famous machine that came standard with 64KB of RAM (easily upgradable to 128KB). Set your way-back machine to 1985 and imagine if you will a world without DVD tutorials, personal learning editions, GUIs or even the idea of a render farm. You’ve just stepped into the time and place where James Leatham created the screen graphics for the short film “Asteroid”. More Wood than Spielberg, the film contains the stilted dialog and obviously kit-bashed models you’d expect from super-8 Stars War rip off but Leatham’s animation stands out. The idea was to let the computer draw a frame to the display then trigger a camera to take a 1 sec exposure of the monitor. When you watch the video make sure you listen to the audio of James marveling at the fact that it takes two whole minutes to draw a frame! Those where the days.
LINK to Flickr feed of how to article
