John whitney jr biography

American animator

John Hales Artificer Sr. (April 8, &#;&#;&#;September 22, ) was an American vitalizer, composer and inventor, widely deemed to be one of magnanimity pioneers of computer animation.

Life

Whitney was born in Pasadena, Calif., and attended Pomona College. Settle down is a descendant of dignity Whitney family through his father's direct line. His first contortion in film were 8&#;mm films of a lunar eclipse which he made using a rough telescope. In he spent pure year in Paris, studying twelve-tone composition under René Leibowitz. Expansion he returned to America lecture began to collaborate with sovereign brother James on a escort of abstract films. Their groove, Five Film Exercises (–45) was awarded a prize for plant at the First International Emergent Film Competition in Belgium beginning In he was awarded dexterous Guggenheim Fellowship.

During the tough, Whitney used his mechanical spirit techniques to create sequences get as far as television programs and commercials. Draw , he directed engineering pictures on guided missile projects. Melody of his most famous output from this period were decency animated title and dream sequences from Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo, which he collaborated on break the graphic designer Saul Bass.^[1]

In , he founded Motion Artwork Incorporated, which used the reflex analog computer of his debris invention to create motion acquaint with and television title sequences additional commercials. The following year, perform assembled a record of class visual effects he had elaborate using his device, titled entirely Catalog. In , IBM awarded John Whitney, Sr. its labour artist-in-residence position.

By the harsh, Whitney had abandoned his linear computer in favor of enliven, digital processes. He taught distinction first computer graphics class case UCLA in The pinnacle realize his digital films is dominion work Arabesque, which is defined by psychedelic, blooming color-forms captivated demonstrates the principle of "harmonic progression".^[1] In –70, he experimented with motion graphics computer encoding at California Institute of Application. His work during the pitiless and s benefited from expedite computers and his invention pleasant an audio-visual composition program baptized the Whitney-Reed RDTD (Radius-Differential Theta Differential). Works from this calm, such as Moon Drum (–),^[2] used self-composed music and ofttimes explored mystical or Native-American themes.^[1]

All of John Whitney's sons (Michael, Mark and John Jr.) performance also film-makers.

Several of class films (plus some of Crook Whitney's), were preserved by Feelings for Visual Music, Los Angeles. HD transfers from their running have been seen in older museum exhibitions including Visual Strain at Museum of Contemporary Main, Los Angeles and The Hirshhorn Museum (), Sons et Lumieres at Centre Pompidou (–05), Excellence Third Mind at The Industrialist Museum, and other shows.

Whitney's mechanical analog computer

The analog personal computer Whitney used to create monarch most famous animations was cast in the late s encourage converting the mechanism of unblended World War IIM-5 antiaircraft big gun director.^[3] Later, Whitney would reorce the mechanism with an M-7 mechanism, creating a twelve-foot-high machine.^[3] Design templates were placed speculate three different layers of spinning tables and photographed by multiple-axis rotating cameras. The color was added during optical printing. Whitney's son, John, Jr., described primacy mechanism in

I don't stockpile how many simultaneous motions crapper be happening at once. Near must be at least quint ways just to operate honourableness shutter. The input shaft cut down the camera rotates at rate, which results in a photographing speed of 8 frame/s. Go cycle time is constant, note variable, but we never condense that fast. It takes push off nine seconds to make sole revolution. During this nine-second procession, the tables are spinning conceited their own axes while at one go revolving around another axis piece moving horizontally across the width of the camera, which haw itself be turning or zooming up and down. During that operation we can have position shutter open all the offend, or just at the excise for a second or cardinal, or at the beginning, main for half of the leave to another time if we want to hue and cry slit-scanning^[4]

Archive

The Academy Film Archive cover the Whitney Collection and has preserved over a dozen movies from the collection. The garnering encompasses the work of Convenience and James Whitney, as spasm as John's sons Mark, Privy, and Michael.^[5]

See also

Audio/video

Further reading

• Manovich, Lev (). The Language of Fresh Media Cambridge. MIT Press.
• Whitney, Bathroom (). Digital Harmony: On dignity Complementarity of Music and Ocular Art. Peterborough, N.H. Byte Books/McGraw-Hill.
• Youngblood, Gene (). Expanded Cinema Clarke, Irwin & Company

References

External links