Olyoptics Timeline - 1984 |
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Before the computer revolution
I wasn’t the only person who recognized that desktop publishing might prove a good coloring tool as well. Unfortunately, no one knew how to do it yet. This was well before Photoshop had been written. Machines weren’t very powerful yet. Memory wasn’t cheap. There were only a few players in the lower end graphics market. The big systems were outrageously expensive. (see Newfoundland , NAB sidebar) There was a company called TimeArts, which developed a graphic arts program called Lumena. It turned out that the company was in Santa Rosa , California , which is only 80 miles from where I live. I’ve always had an interest in computers. In the early 80’s I bought an Atari 800 computer, and then one of the first Macintosh computers. I loved them for word processing, and games but the graphics were really crude. There weren’t color printers, or anything like that yet. The Lumena system used an AT&T Targa graphics card, which was designed for video, but it became the basis for color separation software. The only output was either a videotape recorder, or a film recorder, which made color slides. I paid $75 an hour to hire James Dowling, one of their computer artists to help me prepare a slide to show to Jim Shooter, then editor-in-chief of Marvel. It cost me $450, but Jim wasn’t impressed. He didn’t see the potential. So, I just went back home and kept watching the computer market evolve. I had learned about computer conventions, and attended SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Computer Graphics Group) trade shows, and tried to learn all about this new specialty.
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In 1984, looking to get out of just coloring comics, I was offered a side job up in Newfoundland for 3 months. Working for the millionaires who had created Capt. Newfoundland , I painted covers for the Herald, worked on advertising campaigns for their FM radio and TV stations, and wrote and directed a series of semi-animated commercials for their comics in the Herald. While I was up there, the head engineer of the TV station, the owner’s son, and I flew to Las Vegas for an NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) convention. That was my first really big trade show. We were looking for a graphic system for the TV station. There were two main systems we were considering, a Quantel Paintbox, and an Aurora Animation system. Since the cost was astronomical ($150,000) they didn’t buy either system, but I got to see what the state of the art in computer graphics was. Later when I saw what the Lumena system could do for about $35,000, I was very excited. That’s when I got my first glimpse of how the price-performance ratio of computers was going to shift very quickly.
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