Friday, October 24, 2014

Meet the world's first fully CG animated television show: ReBoot

This is ReBoot. It's a show that ran from 1994 to 2001, and was the first fully computer animated television show. 
Due to the new technology required, production actually began in 1991, 3 years before any of the episodes aired! The show is jam packed with computer jokes and references. It takes place within a computer, and the mysterious "user" is often mentioned. Many of the characters have names that are references, such as "Dot Matrix", "Enzo", and "Phong". 

For being such an early example of computer animation, the show looks  decent. The characters move fairly fluidly and the backgrounds have a lot of life to them. 
One of the characters is literally the number 8. Your guess is as good as mine here. 
A fly through showing the neat backgrounds. Something hard to do with 2D, but easy with 3D!

Overall, the show hasn't aged as well as it could have, but I feel it's still worth a look. Here's an example of an episode. 
In it, a chaotic computer virus takes control of the mainframe's paint terminal. She uses it to wreak havoc on everyone and everything. Oh, and she has no face, just a bunch of masks. I picked this episode, as it shows off how little things like textures make a huge difference. 

Rumor has it that a re-boot of ReBoot might be in the works! How will the characters and world look when created in the crazy powerful engines we have today? I would love to see!

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