Larry Cuba: Star Wars Computer Animation

This making-of video from Larry Cuba explains how he created the computer animation sequence used during the Death Star briefing scene in Star Wars Episode IV. Looking back at the dawn of CG imagery is always interesting for a nerd like me, but it’s even more fascinating when you consider that Larry thought of himself more as an experimental filmmaker than anything else.

In Larry’s own words, from an interview with Video and the Arts Magazine:

It seems the major assumed goal is to push the state of the art technologically. I’m not interested in that. My work is not part of that big race for the flashiest, zoomiest, most chrome, most glass, most super-rendered image. My interest is experimental animation as the design of form in motion, independent of any particular technology used to create it. The underlying problems of design in motion are universal to everyone working in this tradition whether they use the computer or not. So in that sense what I do is not “computer art.”

Other Larry Cuba works
Excerpt from Calculated Movements (previously posted as a Quickie)
Arabesque (created with John Whitney)

Big thanks to Russell Hirtzel for the tip!