The Adventures of André & Wally B.

The Adventures of André & Wally B. (or simply André & Wally B.[1]) is a 1984 American computer-animated short film produced by the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project, a division of Lucasfilm and the predecessor of Pixar. The short was groundbreaking by the standards of the time and helped spark the film industry's interest in computer animation.

The Adventures of André & Wally B.
Poster for The Adventures of André & Wally B.
Film poster
Directed byAlvy Ray Smith
Written byAlvy Ray Smith (concept)
Produced byJohn Lasseter
Production
company
Distributed byLucasfilm
Release dates
  • July 25, 1984 (1984-07-25) (Original SIGGRAPH premiere, unfinished)
  • August 17, 1984 (1984-08-17) (Toronto International Animation Festival, completed)
Running time
2 minutes
CountryUnited States

The animation in the film was by John Lasseter and was his first computer animated project with Lucasfilm. Partially as a result of the success of this project, and others that followed, Lasseter became an executive at Pixar. The film was released on July 25, 1984, at SIGGRAPH in Minneapolis.[2][3]

Plot

The short involves a boy named André awakening in a forest and being confronted by a pesky bumblebee[4] named Wally B. André tricks the bee into turning his back so that he can run away. Angered, Wally B. chases André and eventually catches up with him, and strikes with the stinger. A collision occurs off-screen and a dizzy Wally B. reappears with a bent stinger. Shortly thereafter, Wally B. gets hit by André's tossed hat as a last laugh for revenge.

Production
External video
video icon The Adventures of André & Wally B. on YouTube

The credits for the piece are: concept/direction Alvy Ray Smith, animation John Lasseter, technical lead Bill Reeves, technical contributions by Tom Duff (who designed the animation program called "md", short for "motion doctor"), Eben Ostby, Rob Cook, Loren Carpenter, Ed Catmull, David Salesin, Tom Porter, and Sam Leffler, filming by David DiFrancesco, Tom Noggle, and Don Conway, and computer logistics by Craig Good.

The title is a tribute to the 1981 film My Dinner with Andre, starring André Gregory and Wallace Shawn, the latter of which went on to voice Rex for the Toy Story franchise. It was originally entitled My Breakfast with André, about waking up with an android.[5] The android's awakening was meant to symbolize the rise of computer animation itself.[6]

The animation on the short was groundbreaking, featuring the first use of motion blur in CG animation and complex 3D backgrounds, where the lighting styles and colors were inspired by Maxfield Parrish, made using particle systems. Lasseter pushed the envelope by asking for manipulatable shapes capable of the squash and stretch style, as earlier CG models had generally been restricted to rigid geometric shapes. It was rendered on a Cray X-MP/2 and a Cray X-MP/4 supercomputer at Cray Research's computer center in Mendota Heights, Minnesota, ten VAX-11/750 superminicomputers at Project Athena at MIT, and one VAX-11/780, and three VAX-11/750 computers at Lucasfilm.[7][8] These machines were often available only at night, and much of the movie was therefore made "in the wee hours".[9] Cray Research allowed them to use their computer in hopes Lucasfilm would buy a machine.[7][10] The film's soundtrack was partially produced by SoundDroid.[11]

Release

The film premiered on July 25, 1984, in Minneapolis at the annual SIGGRAPH conference,[2] though 2 shots or about 6 seconds of the film were incomplete and made of wire-frame renders, so-called pencil test footage, over the completed backgrounds.[12] The final rendering of the film was released a month later, on August 17 at Toronto's International Animation Festival.[2] The film was also showcased at "Digicon '85".[11][13]

Home media

The short was released for home video in the collections State of the Art of Computer Animation,[14] Tiny Toy Stories, and Pixar Short Films Collection, Volume 1.[15]

See also

References
  1. "André & Wally B.". Pixar.com. Pixar. Retrieved 3 December 2016.
  2. Smith, Alvy Ray (July 20, 1984). "The Adventures of André & Wally B. Summary" (PDF). alvyray.com. Retrieved April 15, 2012.
  3. "Exclusive: 'Rally To The Finish' Takes Off Flight". ET Online. August 18, 2011. Archived from the original on September 20, 2011. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
  4. The Adventures of André & Wally B – CGI making of (1984) on YouTube
  5. Paik, Karen. To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2007. 42–44.
  6. Levy, Steven (August 31, 2021). "Meet the Little-Known Genius Who Helped Make Pixar Possible". Wired. Retrieved September 5, 2021.
  7. Amidi, Amid (16 May 2017). The Art of Pixar Short Films. Chronicle Books. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-4521-6521-9. Retrieved 18 November 2022.
  8. The Computer Museum, Boston. "Computer Animation Theater 1984-1985" (PDF). Computer History Museum. Retrieved 18 November 2022.
  9. Computer Animation Theater 1984-1985
  10. Alvy Ray Smith Andre and Wally B
  11. Milano, Dominic (November 1985). "Digicon '85 International Arts Conference on Computers and Creativity". Keyboard. 11 (11): 20. A still from The Adventures of André and Wally B., a 3-D animated feature by Alvy Ray Smith's Computer Graphics Division at Lucasfilm. The soundtrack was partially produced using the Sound 'Droid, Lucasfilm's digital sound processing system.
  12. Smith, Alvy Ray (August 14, 1984). "The Making of André & Wally B." (PDF). alvyray.com. Retrieved April 15, 2012.
  13. Austin, Robert (Spring–Summer 1985). "Digicon 85". Perspectives of New Music. 23 (2): 270 (266–272). doi:10.2307/832738. JSTOR 832738.
  14. Steven, Churchill. State of the Art of Computer Animation. Pacific Arts Corp. OCLC 259710280.
  15. Simon, Ben (November 21, 2007). "Pixar Short Films Collection: Volume 1". Animated Views. Retrieved October 17, 2014.
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