Tuesday, October 21, 2008

COLORmation?

This is something I happened upon accidentally which is among the strangest things I've ever seen. It is reportedly from the 1960s (except for the "Something Weird" bumpers) and is amazing in both look and content. I love the blatant sexism and the way Captain Scott hops around like a monkey. The process was apparently called "colormation," which is amusing for obvious reasons.

If the video posted here doesn't work, try this link.

10 comments:

  1. But, then what happens???
    I hate sexist cliffhangers!

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  2. I don't know how accurate this is, but it's interesting.

    This clip reminded me of "Tron". I think I was one of the three people who saw it. ;-)

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  3. anonymous,dan,julie,derek,sayotte,iseer2d2 lets move on to a new topic

    as most of you may know my grandpa or as they say in fench pepere possesses a virgin ass

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  4. It looks just like rotoscoping to me. Still impressive for the time.

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  5. Thats the grand-father of the movies with the green panel backgrounds such "Captain Sky and the World of Tomorrow"?
    Thats was really cool especially for the time!

    And my brothers and I watched Tron too!!

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  6. I think this is a stunningly effective animation technique for its day. The performances are obviously live actors. I don't know if the original action films were traced by hand, or if some photographic technique was used to generate the line drawings.

    Colorization was apparently an expensive final step, which is why it was missing in this demo clip.

    This reminds me of the effect in today's Charles Schwab ads. Live action transformed to line drawings. Fascinating!

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  7. Reminds me of A Scanner Darkly. It appears that they just jack the contract way up so the fine details are gone and it looks like simple animation.

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  8. the technique they used is similar to rotoscoping, using a slower speed film, with live actors and each frame is traced over with line work. decent, but frames are missing or skipped because their mouths are a bit off, makes for a very bizarre clip.

    the open jab of sexism, reminds me of those nuclear cold war videos teaching kids to hide under their school desk if the russians decide to nuke us - or the birdsees beesey sex ed animations; classically absurd, yet a distinctive snapshot of the mentality at that time.

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