Editing Scanimate (section)

{{Short description|Analog computer animation system}}
{{about|the computer animation system|the animation effect|Barrier grid animation and stereography}}
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'''Scanimate''' is an analog [[computer animation]] ([[video synthesizer]]) system created by [[Lee Harrison III]] of [[Denver]], [[Colorado]].  Harrison had developed its predecessor, ANIMAC, which generated used a motion capture system, based on a body suit with potentiometers.  In contrast, Scanimate included TV technology.<ref name="Sturman">{{cite journal |last1=Sturman |first1=David |title=The state of computer animation |journal= [[Computer Graphics (newsletter)|Computer Graphics]] |date=1 February 1998 |volume=32 |issue=1 |page=57 |doi=10.1145/279389.279467 |publisher=[[ACM SIGGRAPH]]|url=https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/279389.279467 |access-date=9 January 2025}}</ref> Scanimate's successor was called Caesar, and used a digital computer to control the analog system.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=yIKLBQAAQBAJ&dq=Computer+Image+Corporation+Animac+Scanimate+Caesar&pg=PA84 Computers for Imagemaking]</ref>

The 8 Scanimate systems were used to produce much of the [[video]]-based animation seen on [[television]] between most of the 1970s and early 1980s in commercials, promotions, and show openings. One of the major advantages the Scanimate system had over [[film]]-based animation and computer animation was the ability to create animations in [[Real-time computer graphics|real time]]. The speed with which animation could be produced on the system because of this, as well as its range of possible effects, helped it to supersede film-based animation techniques for television graphics. By the mid-1980s, it was superseded by digital [[computer animation]], which produced sharper images and more sophisticated 3D imagery.

Animations created on Scanimate and similar analog computer animation systems have a number of characteristic features that distinguish them from film-based animation: The motion is extremely fluid, using all 60 fields per second (in [[NTSC]] format video) or 50 fields (in [[PAL]] format video) rather than the 24 frames per second that film uses; the colors are much brighter and more saturated; and the images have a very "electronic" look that results from the direct manipulation of video signals through which the Scanimate produces the images.