Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!ames!sgi!sfisher@abingdon.wpd.sgi.com
From: sfisher@abingdon.wpd.sgi.com (Scott Fisher)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Max Headroom
Message-ID: <33944@sgi.SGI.COM>
Date: 30 May 89 21:24:20 GMT
References: <688@corpane.UUCP> <5040009@hpfcdc.HP.COM>
Sender: daemon@sgi.SGI.COM
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 38

In article <5040009@hpfcdc.HP.COM>, stroyan@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Mike Stroyan) writes:
> > I know this is a bit away from the mainstream technical topics of this
> > newsgroup, but please indulge me :-)
> 
> It's farther away than you think.
> 
> > I was wondering:  How was Max Headroom animated?  It looks an awful like
> > computer animation, but I heard somewhere that he was created using
> > standard animation techniques?
> 
> Max was Matt Frewer in blocky makeup and a plastic suit.  They used a
> frame store to hold the image and produce the jerky updates and repeated
> sequences.

The techniques used, BTW, are all standard video techniques (if
skillfully done), primarily sample-and-hold on video frames.  At
the time the show was in production, I was working in Westwood, 
California for people other than those mentioned in the subject
line.  A contractor who worked at my site (I can't think of his
last name, even if I didn't want to preserve his anonymity) who
was our video engineer gave a little run-down of the Max Headroom
techniques. It did use some digital video stuff, but no computer
modelling or rendering.

> > If he was created using normal animation, how did they make it look so
> > computerized?  Incredible shading.  Is it possible using todays
> > techniques to create a digital puppet that would perform as Max does?
> 
> The shading was from makeup and lighting.
> 
> It is possible to produce a similar computer generated effect.  There
> was a real time "face puppet" demonstrated at the SIGGRAPH conference
> film and video show last August.

That was very different.  "Mike" (the animated head) was a wireframe
model that was animated in real time, with motion that closely
simulated human facial movements.  At least one of the people involved
with that was Michael Wahrman, now of DeGraf/Wahrman Inc.