Max Headroom and the Strange World of Pseudo-CGI | Hacker News Reader

Max Headroom and the Strange World of Pseudo-CGI

cartoonbrew.com

124 pointsjnazario21 comments

Also see Tron. Many of scenes that look like CGI are not. Pretty much any CG looking scene with a person visible has no CGI and several of the scenes that look 100% cgi are not as well

For example no part of this clip is CGI. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiw2FbHBd14

No CGI in any of this either. Zero Zilch Nada. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PFd9SPuuDM#t=1m10s

no idea how long this will stay up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrCdMHUNznc

Totally right. Here's an example of a live-action frame from Tron. The scene was shot in black and white with insanely high contrast, then color was added by hand.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/todbot/562635012/in/photostream...

Ah, so that's why the faces remained eerily black-and-white!

Tron was mentioned, in addition to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy television series and Escape from New York.

I think the documentary The Making Of TRON is more interesting today than the actual movie. Definitely worth seeking out if you're a fan of the original.

For example: Max Headroom[1] portrayed by Matt Frewer[2] doing vocals in the video[3] for "Paranoimia"[4] by Art of Noise[5] (1986)

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(character)

2. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001242/

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YubzvkNh77w

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoimia

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Noise

Art of Noise---still in love with their highly creative early-electronic-music. Truly in awe.

Somewhat related is S. G. Collins' interesting video explaining why they couldn't have faked going to the moon; it was easier and cheaper to actually go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU

People seem to forget that "electrical" effects predate digital computers. Cathode rays (before and after television) create "high-tech" animated vector-drawn images using analog systems to move the tube. Laser light shows are another example.

The original digital raster graphics were worse in some sense than the analog vector graphics that predated them.

Just to throw this in, but the original Max Headroom movie "20 Minutes into the Future" is not as bad as the Channel 4 / Cinemax music video show or (oh god) the American ABC series.

It's an interesting bit of proto-cyberpunk that even addressed things like digital avatars and real-time viewer feedback nearly 30 years ago.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlmclb_arsenal-09-max-headr...

Yup, that's the one!

Am I the only one to feel like an idiot for not knowing Max Headroom was not an animation. I haven't seen the show since I was young, but now I just want to go find an episode to watch and look at the animation to see how they fooled my younger me.

I remember thinking I wasn't sue but how else. That's also why tv shows you watched when young where better than you remember, you could be fooled more easily and use your imagination whereas today were so use to the special effects that we almost need them, we can't easily imagine it unless its there and looking real'ish.

I remember the exact same confusion. But the backgrounds are computer animated, with Max himself (Matt Fewer) was a real person with plastic appendages to his head.

Well, I feel like an idiot for not knowing it was a British production.

Id...id...id...id....idiot here t-t-t-t-oo!

I'm just pleased I'm not the only one here who remembers when this stuff came out. I also had no idea it wasn't computer animated, but (given the feebleness of the hardware available at the time) it comes as no great surprise.

I'm shocked it's a fake-nimation... As a kid I loved Max and was amazed what the highest end computers can do. I was patiently waiting for that tech to trickle down to us mortal consumers. Of course I only got that when I became 'grown up' and now I learned it was all fake to begin with... Glad I found out now though, and not back then. I even remember, as an Amiga owner at the time, of a word circulating in Amiga circles (way way pre-internet) that Max is created using Amigas.... Silly me.

You could also put the LCARS panels from Star Trek: The Next Generation into this category.

Very interesting.

they forgot the display screens in 2001

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