The year was 1917, early April, 8th to be precise, and a boy named John Hales Whitney was brought to our world in a city of Los Angeles, California, called Pasadena. This boy was going to change the world of computer animation and forever remembered as a famous animator, composer, inventor and known by the majority as the father of computer animation.
He grew up and attended Pomona college. Whitney did his first works in film by using a homemade telescope. What he accomplished by using his telescope were 8mm movies of a lunar eclipse. For the non-knowledgeable a lunar eclipse, in other word, is; when the moon appears darkened as it passes into the earth’s shadow.
When John Whitney was 20 years old, he studied twelve-tone, music composition,
…show more content…
Afterwards, he begun to work on a series of abstract films, collaborating with his brother James who was four years younger. Their noteworthy work, between 1940-45, which they called ”Five Film Exercises” (John #1 and #5; James #2,#3,#4) won a prize for the best sound at the First International Experimental Film Competition in Brussel, the capital of Belgium, in 1949. When we are already on the subject of rewards, Whitney received an award as well, one year before the prize in Belgium, that is called ”Guggenheim Fellowship”, which is an award for those who ”demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship, or exceptional creative ability in the arts.”(John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 2015) In fact, the following year, after they won the price in Belgium, in the 1950s, Whitney begun to create sequences for commercials and TV programs. Not only did Whitney collaborate with his brother James, as a matter of fact, with the graphic designer and academic award winner, Saul Bass as well. Together they made animated title sequence to the psychological thriller film ”Vertigo” (1958) that Alfred Hitchcock directed and …show more content…
Another invention he made was an oil-wipe instrument which he made about 10 abstract musical visual effects with. John Whitney, Sr, did not only accomplish all these works at early age, also 35mm animated series for the UPA studios and in collaboration with Charles Eames they prepared a seven-screen presentation for the Buckminster Fuller Dome in Moscow. Another reason why the two Whitney brothers became famous was that they developed the technique to create a symbiosis between pictures and music. As an example, I attached the link to a demo reel, ”Catalog” (1961), a summon of records of the visual effects, slit-scan effect and the manipulation of light Whitney had created with his analog computer- and film camera, his machine, he built in the late 1950s, from a M-5 antiaircraft gun director from World War II (which Whitney later enhanced with a M-7 mechanism). During World War II, Whitney was working with high-speed missile photography. But it was during this period in his life that he made connection between how weapons targeting elements and linear numerical correlatives, which could be used in conspiering graphics. Regarding the film, as you can notice it demonstrates techniques like the slit-scan effect, which is ”In traditional film photography, slit scan images are created by exposing film as it slides past a slit-shaped
Afterwards, he begun to work on a series of abstract films, collaborating with his brother James who was four years younger. Their noteworthy work, between 1940-45, which they called ”Five Film Exercises” (John #1 and #5; James #2,#3,#4) won a prize for the best sound at the First International Experimental Film Competition in Brussel, the capital of Belgium, in 1949. When we are already on the subject of rewards, Whitney received an award as well, one year before the prize in Belgium, that is called ”Guggenheim Fellowship”, which is an award for those who ”demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship, or exceptional creative ability in the arts.”(John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 2015) In fact, the following year, after they won the price in Belgium, in the 1950s, Whitney begun to create sequences for commercials and TV programs. Not only did Whitney collaborate with his brother James, as a matter of fact, with the graphic designer and academic award winner, Saul Bass as well. Together they made animated title sequence to the psychological thriller film ”Vertigo” (1958) that Alfred Hitchcock directed and …show more content…
Another invention he made was an oil-wipe instrument which he made about 10 abstract musical visual effects with. John Whitney, Sr, did not only accomplish all these works at early age, also 35mm animated series for the UPA studios and in collaboration with Charles Eames they prepared a seven-screen presentation for the Buckminster Fuller Dome in Moscow. Another reason why the two Whitney brothers became famous was that they developed the technique to create a symbiosis between pictures and music. As an example, I attached the link to a demo reel, ”Catalog” (1961), a summon of records of the visual effects, slit-scan effect and the manipulation of light Whitney had created with his analog computer- and film camera, his machine, he built in the late 1950s, from a M-5 antiaircraft gun director from World War II (which Whitney later enhanced with a M-7 mechanism). During World War II, Whitney was working with high-speed missile photography. But it was during this period in his life that he made connection between how weapons targeting elements and linear numerical correlatives, which could be used in conspiering graphics. Regarding the film, as you can notice it demonstrates techniques like the slit-scan effect, which is ”In traditional film photography, slit scan images are created by exposing film as it slides past a slit-shaped