Image West Track #2 from the Scanimate DVD (continued)

00:31:34 Imatique 1981

Image West set up a partnership with the French Television Network's production arm, SFP. The idea was that SFP would help Image West fund the development of its new animation computer, VersEFX, and SFP would form a company in partnership with Image West in Paris, called Imatique. This animation was produced to announce/celebrate the two companies joint relationship. It was designed by Sonny King (his son, Stevan King, was the skateboarder) and Peter Koczera was the technical director.

00:36:10 Image West Demo Reel #20 1982

By this time, the ADO and other digital devices were starting to take some of the market away from analog animation.

00:43:28 Ron Hayes Music Image 1980

Ron Hayes was an incredibly creative guy who did some of the first music videos with the Scanimate. This Earth Wind and Fire video, "Lets Groove", is one of them.

00:45:47 VersEFX Demo 1982

VersEFX was to be a hybrid analog/digital animation system, using digital computers to control the raster scan on the CRT like Scanimate. The idea was that this would keep the real-time capabilities of the Scanimate, which were what made it commercially successful, but give it 3D capabilities. Unfortunately, the image quality of pure digital 3D outweighed the nuisance of the long rendering times and that ultimately put Image West and Computer Image out of business. This demo first shows Image West and teh Scanimates in action, featuring Sonny King, Roy Weinstock, Ed Kramer, Tom Dosh, Peter Koczera, Jim Howe, and many others. The second part shows the VersEFX development team, Dave Sieg, Jim Ryan, Sherry Vosoughi, Bob Ritchie, and ends with some of the early video shot from the test system showing VersEFX's 3D capabilities. Two systems were built, one in LA, one in Paris.

00:50:48 Ron Hayes Music Image Demo 1982

Image West gave Ron Hayes a break on Scanimate time and he did some amazing things with it. He worked on the Stigwood film Sergant Pepper, and produced a lot of live multimedia performances featuring material produced on the Scanimate and projected on huge Eidophor screens. He was way before his time. We all miss him a lot! This was his Music Image Demo reel.

NOTES: There is no telling who actually owns the copyright to these images now, since Lee Harrison, founder of Computer Image, and inventor of the Scanimate is dead, Computer Image and Image West are both no longer in business, and the clients the jobs were done for have long since ceased to care about them. I present them here as a historical archive of material that I feel is an important piece of the history of computer-generated animation. Much of this material is supplemented by explanations and further details on this website. I would like someday to archive this material with nice menus and package it better, but I am doing this as a labor of love and in hopes of preventing these images from disappearing from the public eye altogether.

Note about the footage quality:All of the Image West material came from 3/4" and is of reasonably good quality. If you have additional material or better quality copies, please contact me, dave@zfx.com.