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Ed Catmull’s ‘Computer Animated Hand’ Added To National Film Registry

December 28, 2011 By 1 Comment

Computer animation came into fruition in the 1990s, notably with the release of Toy Story by Pixar, though that is a bit deceiving to the medium’s birth. Pixar may have been the first to make the world of computer animation enjoyable and profitable, but the process of animating through a computer had been in development for decades before that. One of those gentleman at the forefront of computer animation was Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull, who created A Computer Animated Hand, one of the first fully-rendered forms of computer animation. The New York Times (via Cinema Blend) announced that the short is now being added to the National Film Registry, to be preserved for future generations.

The movement of the hand may seem rudimentary in comparison to the fast-moving and detailed animation that comes out of Pixar these days, but back in 1972, A Computer Animated Hand was revolutionary. It is mind-boggling that this technology was being developed almost 40 years ago. Try not to get goosebumps as you watch it in the video below:


Each year, the National Film Registry (part of the Library of Congress) selects 25 films to join its catalog of works to be preserved for all time. It is meant to represent American culture, so important and significant films are chosen by the Library. The description that the Registry provides for Ed Catmull’s short is:

A Computer Animated Hand (1972)
Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, renowned for its CGI (computer generated image) animated films, created a program for digitally animating a human hand in 1972 as a graduate student project, one of the earliest examples of 3D computer animation. The one-minute film displays the hand turning, opening and closing, pointing at the viewer, and flexing its fingers, ending with a shot that seemingly travels up inside the hand. In creating the film, which was incorporated into the 1976 film “Futureworld,” Catmull worked out concepts that become the foundation for computer graphics that followed.

This year, 2,228 films were nominated by the public. To view the full list of the 25 films being added to the National Film Registry this year, click here.

Via: New York Times/Cinema Blend

Source: Library of Congress

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About Samad Rizvi

Samad is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Pixar Times. His favorite films include The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Vertigo, Back to the Future, Children of Men, and of course, Pixar's Monsters, Inc., WALL-E and Up. His most anticipated films of 2012 include Brave, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, and Prometheus.

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    It took Ed many years to accomplish his dream.  He said, “For twenty years, I pursued a dream of making the first computer-animated film. To be honest, after that goal was realized — when we finished Toy Story — I was a bit lost.  But then I realized the most exciting thing I had ever done was to help create the unique environment that allowed that film to be made.” The partnership of Ed Catmull and John Lasseter has become one of the most symbiotic since that of Walt Disney and his brother Roy, who together opened the Disney Brothers Studio back in 1923.  Like Walt and Roy, Ed and John have accomplished far beyond what either could have done alone.  Capodagli and Jackson, authors of Innovate the Pixar Way