The whole story is here, with links to some of the classic music videos they made (like Atomic Doc, Abracadabra, Bongo Bongo, and the Flying Logos SigGraph demo):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29261868
George Clinton - Atomic Dog (Official Music Video) HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMVZ36VA0wg
Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY8B0uQpwZs
Steve Miller Band - Bongo Bongo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NrsRZdMI-A
Flying Logos for 1989 Siggraph Electronic Theater:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hIOfEiy4lc
>First shown at the 1989 Siggraph Electronic Theater to a rave response, this 3 minute humourous film went on to win several top computer graphic awards that same year including Niccograph of Japan.
>With a voiceover soundtrack written by Peter Conn and animations assembled from various productions done during the previous year, the film unfolds as a client calls into Flying Logos, Inc. to have his logo visualized. In the course of the conversation, we see and hear the juxtaposition of the technical versus the anticipated, the imagination versus the possibility.
>But more important than amusing audiences and winning awards, this landmark film marked the debut of the PC as a fully capable production system to do broadcast quality work, which up to then was only done by large companies with very expensive graphic workstations.
[Don: I truly believe that in some other alternate dimension, there is a Flying Logo Heaven where the souls of dead flying logos go, where they dramatically promenade and swoop and spin around each other in pomp and pageantry to bombastic theme music. It would make a great screen saver, at least! Somewhere the Sun Logo and the SGI Logo are still dancing together.]
http://leftbrain.us/rotherHistory/homer.html
>In front of the Optical Printer 7-bit Paint system, Homer and Associates, circa 1982.
>Homer and Associates was really one of a kind kinda of company. Founded by Peter Conn, originally I got hired to program Homer II, a visual realtime mixing console. Homer I is another whole story, but before my time. Homer II consisted of 16 slide projectors, 4 movie projectors, a 4 track tape recorder, 24 visual channels (each with its own Z80) touch sensitive sliders, a master Z80 S100 bus system and featuring "the joy stick bumper " control, which looked liked the gear shift right out of a 1964 mustang convertible.
>The idea was that you would program a visual sequence, then play the sequence in sync with the sound track on the joystick, including cascades, bumps, cuts, etc. The whole thing would be recorded, and if you wanted to, like an audio mixer, go back and do over dubs, making corrections. Then once you had the perfect "hero" recording, you take the 8" floppy disc with the hero recording and the trays of slides to the optical printer, and record it to motion picture film, making multiple passes, one tray at a time. Now that I think about it, it was a crazy idea. We actually got the whole thing to work. And it worked great!