This is a 1988 Composite Showreel from the Symbolics Graphics Division. The Stanley and Stella piece starts at 06:27.
S-Graphics running on Symbolics hardware became nearly ubiquitous in film and broadcast animation in the late 80s and early 90s. In 1987, a groundbreaking animation was produced by the Symbolics Graphics Division: “Stanley and Stella in Breaking The Ice”. Stanley and Stella was one of the first applications of Craig Reynolds (SMBX Alum ’82-’91) “boids” behavioral animation model. Since 1987 there have been many other applications of the boids model in the realm of behavioral animation. The 1992 Tim Burton film Batman Returns was the first. It contained computer simulated bat swarms and penguin flocks which were created with modified versions of the original boids software developed at Symbolics. Andy Kopra (SMBX Alum, then at VIFX, which later merged with Rhythm & Hues) produced realistic imagery of bat swarms. Andrea Losch (then at Boss Films) and Paul Ashdown created animation of an “army” of penguins marching through the streets of Gotham City.
