Alan Kitching's Antics is a Fortran software package designed specifically to meet the needs of animators and graphic designers. It used as output device the Atlas Computer Laboratory's SC4020 and later the FR80.
The work started in 1973 at the Atlas Computer Laboratory. Alan Kitching had his own Grove Park Studios but worked at Atlas in conjunction with Colin Emmett for the Royal College of Art.
The main features are:
- The main input is freehand design drawings together with instructions that drive the animation
- Output is full colour movie film, of quality comparable to conventional animation. This is achieved by drawing closely packed lines on the SC4020 in 3 separate runs to create the colour masters for the animation
- Of all the early systems, it is the one closest to cel animation. Character animation, moving backgrounds, mattes and complex optical effects are all possible
- The system requires no computer experience or programming knowledge to use it so was ideal for the conventional animator
- It borrows ideas from both the work at Computer Image on CAESAR and the work of Burtny and Wein at the National Film Board of Canada.
- Sound tracks can be defined on the film itself
Two early papers that describe the system are Computer Animation - Some New ANTICS given at Film73 and Computer animation with ANTICS which concentrates on the medical animations produced.
The ANTICS system was available at the Atlas Computer Laboratory for academic users free of charge.
Alan Kitching produced regular ANTICS Show Reals that were widely shown and the most ambitious of the early animation films, Finite Elements, was produced using ANTICS under a contract from the Atlas Computer Laboratory.
His famous artwork entitled The Rainbow's Egg is part of the Victoria & Albert Museum's collection.
The Story of G (1979) is an example of his work for Swedish TV. There is a manual available for the Swedish version.
Another paper of interest is Antics: From Stone-Age to Steam Age. which gives an overview of the system.