Fair Play by Apollo Computer

[@yetanotheruser1989]

Apollo were making some beautiful stuff. The rendering was, and still is wonderful

[@NewWaveEnthusiast]

When I heard this for the very first time, this sparked my interest in Vintage CGI. The music is just compelling and beautiful, magnetic to the mind. There was no going back after the bar was set this high for storytelling and visuals.

[@misiwasy]

I have found this after 24 years

[@angelamontgomery9007]

I must’ve gone to see this in the theatre 5 times just to hear this music.

[@KieferSkunk]

A classic for sure. :) It's stuff like this that provided both entertainment and proof of concept for how computer animation could be a viable art form, and not just a flash in the pan. Horribly dated by now, but you definitely could see all the interesting challenges the artists took on to make this short little film.

[@vr0p]

I don't think it's dated too bad compared to other similar shorts. For example while limited to simple polygons, they use them in clever ways e.g. the square "visor" that represents the main character's gaze - it looks better than what most of the other short films of the era did with Mr Potatohead style lips and eyeballs, in the sense that the simple polygon "visor" fits in with the rest of the scene being composed of simple polygons.

[@KieferSkunk]

@@vr0p Absolutely. It was a deliberate artistic choice that embraced the limitations of the tech. It fits in the abstract art aesthetic that lets you as the viewer project some element of yourself into the character simply because of how little detail it has. I suppose what I meant by "dated" was the fact that anyone today that looks at this without having seen it at the time it was made probably wouldn't appreciate what it took to make it or how amazing it was at the time. I have this conversation all the time about classic video games from the 80s, when talking to people who grew up with the PS2. To you and me, this film is timeless. But to people who've grown up with advanced real-time graphics and photorealistic effects, this will look dated and primitive.

[@Tindre]

this has felt nostalgic for me even when I saw it as I was a kid, I love it and the bittersweet vibes in it.

[@nar2cc]

By far my favourite Short of all time, just magical.

[@Swaggerpede]

V A P O R W A V E?

[@VideyoJunkei]

I NEED a good blue-ray file of this! It was my favorite on the VHS I rented and copied in the 80's!

[@vr0p]

archive.org/details/StateOfTheArtOfComputerAnimation1988 Over by download options, grab the h.264 encoded file (or the torrent if you are familiar with that protocol). I think "Fair Play" occurs somewhere near the halfway mark. If I remember correctly the file on archive.org is pretty good quality. My own version is quite a large file that I don't care to host somewhere.

[@FrogmaskMusic]

(Marginally) higher quality available at kzbin.info/www/bejne/a6nafXmImcqqnac (34:07)

[@kylepena8908]

I feel there was some version of this or a similar video that had pterodactyl type creatures

[@vr0p]

At the beginning of the compilation I got this from (State of the Art of Computer Animation), one of the first sequences involves flying creatures, through the haze of nostalgia they could have seemed like pterodactyls

[@kylepena8908]

@@vr0p I don’t think that was it. I got the sense the creature were evolving, starting with plants like this

[@klaxonko4343]

anyone know the source of the audio played in the beginning?

[@vr0p]

the VHS I have leaves all the short film credits to the end of the tape, rather than at the end of each individual short, so I didn't think to include them. It would be a good idea for me to edit the credits at the end of this... For now though: Music composed and performed by Greg Hawkes - a production of Oversnare Music Inc. Music Production Coordinator Andy Topeka

[@vr0p]

oh shit Greg Hawkes was the keyboardist for The Cars, and Andy Topeka may have been an equipment tech for The Cars as well

[@klaxonko4343]

oh wow--I'm glad we found this out. The music sounded too good to be your usual pulled-from-a-music-library 3D backing track.

[@klaxonko4343]

I'm enjoying his "Voyage into Space"

[@joebowbeer]

Fireworks and credits here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/b2fPpqhqltCLf8Um2s - sorry about poor quality

[@terab6572]

Can you please digitaze it with 50fps de-interlacing?

[@vr0p]

I could but it will take a few months, away from home on an assignment

[@terab6572]

I will wait!