It was back in the 30s and 40s that the Disney Studios first dazzled audiences with the visual splendors of full animation and Technicolor to create feasts of visual fantasies on a scale that the world had never known possible. And though that revolution come and gone, the riches of that age (Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia et al.) are with us nearly 50 years later.
But now another revolution is upon us. When Disney's Tron is released in July it will be the first motion picture to make extensive use of computer graphics.
Though the techniques that made the cel animated classics of 50 years ago seem simple and easily understood to us now, that was certainly not the case when Walt Disney revolutionized the art of animated film. The situation is the same today in our modern electronic age when we apply the awesome power of computers to filmmaking.
Computer graphics were first applied to aerospace and scientific research in the mid 1960s, when methods of simulating objects digitally in three dimensions proved to be more effective than building models. Since that time several companies have been expanding that technology into the entertainment field to create new worlds for motion pictures — computer created landscapes that could not physically exist in the real world.
Computers are new and powerful tools for the artists of the imagination. […]
