Art Director of Concurrent Images, Japan, 1985-1987

My first professional work in art and design was as the Art Director of Concurrent Images in Tokyo, back in 1985. Sounds impressive doesn't it? But I was also the technical director and chief bottlewasher. I made the coffee too. This was a 2 man startup which used a novel new software technique for making computer animation, in an era when computer animation costs $6000 a minute!

The photo above shows the small studio where the work was done. Don't be fooled by the ancient IBM PC (DOS), a Meiko Computing Surface supercomputer is hidden under the table! The bulky box between the PC and the UMATIC video recorder is the hand made 24 bpp graphics board with NTSC Phase Locked Loop.

One of our biggest clients was McCann-Erikson-Hakuhodo, I did the Gillette animation for them which was broadcast in Japan in 1986. See the images above and below.

As you can see from the images below I also carried out research into ray tracing "soft objects"...

which eventually led to doing a demo for Coca Cola Japan.

Remember that this was all done 20 and more years ago. I look at my face in these photos now...

...and wonder "who on earth is that?"

Concurrent Images folded in 1986, mainly due to competition from larger companies which were in fact backed by even bigger companies. Out competitors did not need to make money because they were used as demonstrations of the parent company's technical prowess. But we had to eat and drink. A 2 man outfit could not compete. The last animation I made was for the Tokyo Broadcasting System, an intro to their baseball program.

Then...on to Italy!

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