Product Details

• Directors: John Lasseter
• Producers: Craig Good, Ralph Guggenheim
• Format: Animated, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Sony Wonder (Video)
• DVD Release Date: March 2, 1999
• Run Time: 1 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0738920215
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,395 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Computer Animation Showcase" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Only a few of the shorts, commercials, and student films in this anthology actually tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Made for Sesame Street, "Light and Heavy" puts an idea across simply and clearly, while preserving the personalities of the lamps from the award-winning "Luxo, Jr." "Juju Shampoo" spoofs hair-care ads and showcases a then-new technique for rendering hair. "Time for Love," a tale of affections lost and won, displays a genuine charm that is all too rare in computer animation. In each case, the creators used the medium to express an idea, rather than allowing the computer to dictate the look and content of the film.

In contrast, "Dreamaker" features shimmering surfaces that suggest Tiffany glass, but it remains an exercise in technique. "Fan-tasy" tries very hard to copy "Luxo," but the animation lacks the nuances that brought the lamps to life. In "Tosio," the gargoyle atop a walking stick literally coughs its lungs out--although the entrails look like plastic, the effect is sophmoric at best. The crashingly unfunny "Dutch Nelson, Galaxy Guy" is a trailer for a nonexistent film--an idea many students entertain, but usually outgrow by their second year of film school. --Charles Solomon

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent collection of CG short films! Recommended!, January 21, 2000

By 

Paul Steffen (Monterey, Ca) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Computer Animation Showcase (DVD)

It's frustrating paying $20 for a DVD only to get a bunch of lame Bryce or amateurish Lightwave animations and maybe two or three good ones, if at all. My last few CG DVD purchases were like that, and I probably would have avoided this one had not a friend called me up and told me about it! (Thanks! HH!)

The quality of many of the animations on this disc are _REALLY_ good, with only a few exceptions. A couple of my personal favorites on this disc;

"Michael Gagne's Prelude to Eden" is _AWESOME_! Gagne is a well-known animator (his childrens books are on Amazon) and worked on Iron Giant. If you liked the climax in Iron Giant, you'll like this one.

"Light & Heavy" - another of Pixar's Luxo Jr. shorts done for Sesame Street.

"Joe & Basket: Mostly Sports" - Very wacky and well-done character animation.

"Dreamaker" - Very surreal animation with a nice music track. This is one of the best I've seen yet in this style.

"Operating Manual for Spaceship Uterus" - Too surreal for words! Awesome!

"Displaced Dice" - This is neat little animation from Mental Images (makes of the excellent MentalRay rendering software, used by Softimage and now 3D Max 3) showing off some very cool displacement mapping effects on a very simple scene. Nice music track.

"Beyond the Walls" - This is a very cool "virtual band" animation produced by Animusic. This animation was actually produced in stereoscopic form to be shown at amusement parks as "Concerto in 3D!" One nice aspect with this animation is the fact that quite a bit of the animation was driven directly by the MIDI soundtrack. Animusic also did the intro animation for this DVD.

"Dutch Nelson, Galaxy Guy" - A rather long comical animation done in the typically, ummmm, aesthetic-minimalistic style of Ronin Animation. What it lacks in subtlety makes up in humor, I guess...

"Tinkle Terror" - Very funny and cute animation. One of the best 'student' animations I've seen.

2.0 out of 5 stars Dissappointing Animation, July 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Computer Animation Showcase (DVD)

I guess most of the collection are quite poor in the quality of animation either in the 3D model itself or the story line. A lot of the 3D animations didn't have a good control on the timing, "gravity" and "Ummph"!

The story line for most of the animations also doesn't impressed me. I've seen an animation collection VHS from PIXAR 3 years ago (actually it was out 5yrs ago) and the quality is superb! This DVD is a dissappointment to me.

4.0 out of 5 stars Good DVD for the Kids, July 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Computer Animation Showcase (DVD)

These collections of animation shorts are good for the first watch. After that the majority of them get old in a hurry. However, my kids love this DVD and I recommend it as a good kid genre video. Although the kids don't like this one as much as the newest Odessey DVD "Computer Animation Marvels". I love the Pixar short with the kid and adult lamps interacting. I wish Pixar would put out a full feature length DVD with just these lamp characters.