Watch The First Ever Pixar Film Featuring a 3-D Hand From 1972

Check out the world's first 3-D rendering, an animated version of Pixar founder Ed Catmull's left hand.

vimeo.com

Way before Woody and Buzz hit the scene, Ed Catmull, the would-be founder of Pixar created the first ever digitally rendered 3D film. And thanks to the son on one of Catmull's colleagues, who recently digitized the film from it original 8mm reel, this awesome footage just recently found its way to the Internet for your viewing pleasure.

Catmull, along with the help of some fellow Computer Science graduate students from the University of Utah, made animation history in 1977 using a plaster hand and some incomprehensible computer graphics formulas (which are explained in depth here).

In the revolution of animation, this is the ape crawling on all fours that eventually becomes the Pixar we know and obsess over today, and it's a truly awesome transformation to watch.

[via NY Mag and Nerd Plus Art]

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