The history of the Video Animation System (VAS), a technology that transformed the animation industry beginning in 1976, remains vivid in the minds of animators who used it at CalArts, Bakshi Films, Industrial Light and Magic and throughout the animation industry.

The history of the Lyon Lamb Video Animation System, from its inception until 1980, is now being documented to shine a light on a disruptive time in animation and special effects history.

During this period, Lyon Lamb created some of the most future forward analog tools: the Video Animation System (VAS) and the Video Rotoscope. Digital was just around the corner in the 1980s, and the VAS was the leading tool used at CalArts by the now legendary class of CalArts animators, “the kids of A113.”

The Lyon Lamb Story

The story began in Laguna Beach California, 1975. John Lamb was a young animator and avid surfer who'd found a beach-side studio paradise. The only thing that would get him to leave Laguna was to drive to Los Angeles to get his animation drawings turned into a film-based pencil test.

Lamb’s animation business was growing and he needed more space. He made arrangements to see a studio in Laguna Canyon.

At the studio space, Bruce Lyon introduced himself, and welcomed John inside. Immediately, John took to an interesting video of a guy in motion floating above 3 feet of mustard grass. Bruce said it was a time lapse video system he was experimenting with, borrowed from the company he worked for. Immediately, John saw it as animation. "What's the slowest this machine can record?” Bruce responded "every second and a half."  John went out to his car and grabbed some drawings and a peg-bar.

With Bruce’s assistance, John turned the camera, which was on a tripod, into a down shooter position and placed the drawings on the pegs in numerical order. Bruce adjusted the machine to shoot at its slowest speed, which gave them a second and a half to remove each drawing consecutively, as the camera ran in a continuous motion. They successfully shot about three seconds of animation, stopped the machine, put it in rewind and played it back. 

In that instant John watched in amazement as his character walked across the screen!

They had just created a proof of concept electronic “pencil test,” which was the process of pre-checking animation drawings before committing them to final production. The pencil test allowed an animator to observe and then adjust the character's motion, before it was approved for production. At the time, each pencil test process took at least three days and great expense shooting in film and processing to complete, which was the only available solution, other than the crude flipbook technique.

“If there was a manual button on this machine” John said, “an animator could see their work immediately and make changes on the spot." It was crystal clear that it could speed up the animation process dramatically, and take out the cost of the film-based pencil test. It would save a vast amount of time and resources. Bruce said he knew an engineer at GYYR who might be able to help make that happen.

With Bruce’s technical engineering contacts at GYYR Products (a security time lapse video company) and John’s animation knowledge, they set out to develop with GYYR, a video recorder to our custom specifications. It had to be able to record single frames on a trigger input and also have the capability to playback at Film Speed (24 fps). It was nearly 18 months of work with GYYR engineers to vigorously test and perfect the technique.

This was a novel process that created the first “Electronic Animation Pencil Test” and it was captured with a Video Tape Recorder. Plus, the VTR playback was indeed the industry film standard 24 frames per second. The Lyon Lamb “Video Animation System” was born.

Walt Disney Productions was the very first customer. Legend has it that they leased the VAS and took it apart to reverse engineer it. After many frustrating months, they were unable to recreate it and purchased a few. Ralph Bakshi was the second customer. Many VAS went to commercial houses such as Kurtz and Friends and to educational institutions like CalArts, where “the kids of A113" were just starting out.

With Disney as a calling card, doors opened to the entire animation community and the VAS became an industry standard. It soon became apparent that every animator needed one.