Not seen this for years! Those were VERY exciting days. As former Paintbox product manager I was constantly amazed at the results produced by users around the world. This video contains many examples. For example there're a few frames of a beached boat. I saw Sir Huge Casson, then in his 80s, meet the Box for the first time and create picture from scratch within an hour - proof (again) of a true creative tool for creative people.
I actually have a Paint box DPB 7001 (1981) sitting next to me (not working yet, restoring it. This is the one out of Ellstree studios and was involved in Dr Who etc :o) There are videos on my channel as I work on it and we have full photographic documentation too :o)
Something that really surprised me reading Wikipedia is that they were still making standalone Quantel Paintbox workstations up until 2002. While the capabilities of this machine are truly impressive for the 80’s and early 90’s (and it better, being that it cost close to a million dollars in today’s money), I really can’t imagine a studio still using one in an era where commodity x86 workstations running Adobe/Autodesk etc software on Windows had long taken over.
Well they hadn’t “long taken over” by then, that’s exactly the thing. Most Windows and Mac based systems of the time still needed lots of render time to produce the final output, whereas the Paintbox was realtime. In TV production, that was worth its weight in gold. Even among systems based on commodity computers, the high end professional systems like Avid still used lots of custom hardware to do things in realtime, with the host computer mostly just drawing the UI and bossing around the custom hardware. To this day, lots of real-time graphics are done in highly custom systems.
It's sad that Quantel took Spaceward down through dubious legal acts. The details of the case remain contestable as they tried to achieve the same monopoly over Adobe and failed...fortunately, but too late for SM. The technical competitive development between the two companies would have been far more beneficial for the two companies and the customers than the long term results of a lawsuit. They tried it again with Parallax over their Matador system; a pre-cursor to Adobe's After Effects. Matador lead to Illusion. (Quantel had Harry). Both systems could co-exist and did. Avid bought Parallax among several other companies and stupidly killed off Illusion in favour of DS. Where's that now? The Paintbox was a fantastic piece of kit. So clean, as was Matisse. Now we all use PS...what else is there? That said..oh what good times. We had things like clients with good budgets.
***** It was a very well thought out piece of kit. Sad that Quantel put their efforts into fighting the competition through law suits than continuing to innovate. PS users have no idea what they're missing or what could have been. PS is messy and poorly laid out, but where's the competition?
I worked on a video paintbox in 1985; the second in Holland in fact, the pen was still connected to the tablet with a wire. We had some 8 inch floppy disks that could store 1 video frame. For more frames we had to dump a job to a BVU recorder and hope that we could read tis sequential data back in later. I recall that this paintbox could store no more than 80 frames internally. Thes were great times and I think that the User Interface of the Quantel Paintbox is still superiour to anything 2013!
Yeah, I haven't found a paint program that replicated the need to mix colors on a palette like the Paintbox did. That's something that never took off with Photoshop and the others but perhaps there was a patent trademark on it that couldn't be infringed upon even though the basis of it is fairly Public Domain in the art world.
Don't know if you'll see this, but can anyone help? I'm trying to replicate 80s graphics and notice banners created in the 80s Paintbox never could touch/go beyond the edges of the frame. Is this right? Does anyone know why? Would they look as if they went out of frame with overscan?
@@interstat2222 the whole frame was bounded by the size of the video frame. It just stopped there. As opposed to a 3d environment where the space is virtually endless, one video frame was limited to the horizontal and vertical size of the frame. Outside the frame nothing exists
@@artwaveart Thank you for replying. I still don’t understand why banners were stopping short of edges. Please look up ‘Christmas on ITV 1986 trailer’ here and see the grey title banner. It stops short of the video frame edges. I keep seeing it on banners for some reason, although other graphics touch the edges. Do you know why?
@@interstat2222 yes i see what you mean. Maybe it is due to the way this was "digitized" . I guess this is not intentional, but probably the banners were continuing into the "safe area" and it would look as intended on a home television screen. The black on the right and the top indicate that what you see here is the complete video frame; more than what would be visible on a home tv set. Grtz
Voiced by someone who was filmed in what was possibly one of the earlier uses for it, dangling againgst a greenscreen (you might think it's blue, but if you look carefully there's a very thin green silhouette on the edge of his hair!) wearing a fedora and an extremely long scarf, and superimposed over a shot of a radio telescope., minutes before he's about to turn into Peter Davison.
Quantel DPE5000 and ordinary CSO was used in Leisure Hive. Paintbox wasn't used until 1982-1983. I don't think there's anything before Tomb of Rassilon matte painting in Five Doctors.
@eMGeeGFX I managed to get one from an old Quantel repair place. Came with all the manuals and spare pens/optical disks etc. It's still great fun! Cost $500 but it was something I always wanted since I was a kid ;-).
I have a Quantel Paintbox lapel badge from late 80's. Our graphics agency was near Quantel in Newbury and Chris Higgins spent some time training up on it in exchange for some promo work for them...
I feel sorry for all the great designers whose imagination was held back by this early tech. Though im sure people in 20 years will look back at us now and think the same.
Yup! And I'm the artist that used it there. I worked a Nickelodeon studios in Orlando from 1990 to 1996 as the Sr. Graphic Designer. I did all the graphics for the shows in Orlando. I did Clarissa, Double Dare, Guts and more. Hundreds of graphics for promos too including 'Nick or Treat'. Nothing beats Paintbox even today. PS is garbage - primitive irritating little icons. Too bad it's gone.
Not really, it didn't have quite a fancy animation function as it was very rudimentary. Often used for cycles like showing a neon logo flashing for instance.
Not seen this for years! Those were VERY exciting days. As former Paintbox product manager I was constantly amazed at the results produced by users around the world. This video contains many examples. For example there're a few frames of a beached boat. I saw Sir Huge Casson, then in his 80s, meet the Box for the first time and create picture from scratch within an hour - proof (again) of a true creative tool for creative people.
What was the resolution?
Are you aware of the Exhibition recently held at the UK Computer Arts Society in London?
So old school yet so advanced and cool.
Exactly!🤩
Gotta love Tom Baker’s majestic voice!
Yes!
I actually have a Paint box DPB 7001 (1981) sitting next to me (not working yet, restoring it. This is the one out of Ellstree studios and was involved in Dr Who etc :o) There are videos on my channel as I work on it and we have full photographic documentation too :o)
)
Something that really surprised me reading Wikipedia is that they were still making standalone Quantel Paintbox workstations up until 2002. While the capabilities of this machine are truly impressive for the 80’s and early 90’s (and it better, being that it cost close to a million dollars in today’s money), I really can’t imagine a studio still using one in an era where commodity x86 workstations running Adobe/Autodesk etc software on Windows had long taken over.
Well they hadn’t “long taken over” by then, that’s exactly the thing. Most Windows and Mac based systems of the time still needed lots of render time to produce the final output, whereas the Paintbox was realtime. In TV production, that was worth its weight in gold. Even among systems based on commodity computers, the high end professional systems like Avid still used lots of custom hardware to do things in realtime, with the host computer mostly just drawing the UI and bossing around the custom hardware. To this day, lots of real-time graphics are done in highly custom systems.
It's sad that Quantel took Spaceward down through dubious legal acts. The details of the case remain contestable as they tried to achieve the same monopoly over Adobe and failed...fortunately, but too late for SM.
The technical competitive development between the two companies would have been far more beneficial for the two companies and the customers than the long term results of a lawsuit.
They tried it again with Parallax over their Matador system; a pre-cursor to Adobe's After Effects. Matador lead to Illusion. (Quantel had Harry). Both systems could co-exist and did.
Avid bought Parallax among several other companies and stupidly killed off Illusion in favour of DS. Where's that now?
The Paintbox was a fantastic piece of kit. So clean, as was Matisse. Now we all use PS...what else is there?
That said..oh what good times. We had things like clients with good budgets.
***** It was a very well thought out piece of kit. Sad that Quantel put their efforts into fighting the competition through law suits than continuing to innovate.
PS users have no idea what they're missing or what could have been.
PS is messy and poorly laid out, but where's the competition?
+Avidcomp
There's paint net and GIMP.
I like paint net. It's not heavy duty, but that's why I like it.
Simple, but not MS Paint simple.
+1 I love paint.net, even while I still have photoshop.
I worked on a video paintbox in 1985; the second in Holland in fact, the pen was still connected to the tablet with a wire. We had some 8 inch floppy disks that could store 1 video frame. For more frames we had to dump a job to a BVU recorder and hope that we could read tis sequential data back in later. I recall that this paintbox could store no more than 80 frames internally.
Thes were great times and I think that the User Interface of the Quantel Paintbox is still superiour to anything 2013!
Yeah, I haven't found a paint program that replicated the need to mix colors on a palette like the Paintbox did. That's something that never took off with Photoshop and the others but perhaps there was a patent trademark on it that couldn't be infringed upon even though the basis of it is fairly Public Domain in the art world.
Don't know if you'll see this, but can anyone help?
I'm trying to replicate 80s graphics and notice banners created in the 80s Paintbox never could touch/go beyond the edges of the frame.
Is this right? Does anyone know why?
Would they look as if they went out of frame with overscan?
@@interstat2222 the whole frame was bounded by the size of the video frame.
It just stopped there.
As opposed to a 3d environment where the space is virtually endless, one video frame was limited to the horizontal and vertical size of the frame. Outside the frame nothing exists
@@artwaveart Thank you for replying. I still don’t understand why banners were stopping short of edges. Please look up ‘Christmas on ITV 1986 trailer’ here and see the grey title banner. It stops short of the video frame edges.
I keep seeing it on banners for some reason, although other graphics touch the edges.
Do you know why?
@@interstat2222 yes i see what you mean.
Maybe it is due to the way this was "digitized" .
I guess this is not intentional, but probably the banners were continuing into the "safe area" and it would look as intended on a home television screen.
The black on the right and the top indicate that what you see here is the complete video frame; more than what would be visible on a home tv set.
Grtz
I was trained on the Harry / Paintbox in 1990 - oh the memories. Great times.
Was it guaranteed work after completing the course or was the market saturated with overdkilled people?
2:42 - There's Mark Knopfler.
Voiced by someone who was filmed in what was possibly one of the earlier uses for it, dangling againgst a greenscreen (you might think it's blue, but if you look carefully there's a very thin green silhouette on the edge of his hair!) wearing a fedora and an extremely long scarf, and superimposed over a shot of a radio telescope., minutes before he's about to turn into Peter Davison.
***** I was referring to Logopolis there.
Quantel DPE5000 and ordinary CSO was used in Leisure Hive. Paintbox wasn't used until 1982-1983. I don't think there's anything before Tomb of Rassilon matte painting in Five Doctors.
Woah.. Retro overload. I didn't know about this device, just found about it when I watched a video about a 14 inch hard drive that this used.
Or some Paintbox model used that hard drive I mean
@eMGeeGFX I managed to get one from an old Quantel repair place. Came with all the manuals and spare pens/optical disks etc. It's still great fun! Cost $500 but it was something I always wanted since I was a kid ;-).
I have a Quantel Paintbox lapel badge from late 80's. Our graphics agency was near Quantel in Newbury and Chris Higgins spent some time training up on it in exchange for some promo work for them...
lol, it's the narrator from Little Britain (U.K.)!
Watch out Quantel, there is a new kid on the block and its going to kick your digital ass. Photoshop is here.
VAPORWAVE material right here
ky kale I agree! 👍
1:10 Looking at this I can tell that some early MTV videos that were considered groundbreaking that are now hella cheezy were done with this.
Is that a variant of the After Effects "render complete" sound at 1:40?
ME TOO. GREAT TIMES!
These were very expensive. Some were over $100,000.
I feel sorry for all the great designers whose imagination was held back by this early tech. Though im sure people in 20 years will look back at us now and think the same.
Held back? This is fantastic.
Actually right now, some are using Ai to generate graphics and images and laugh at dedigners
"an internal hard disk with the equivalent of 185 full frame pictures" :_)
In the TV biz, that's probably all it took for a standard production flow. This wasn't saving thousands of pics on a hard drive like today.
The Joker at 2:09 !
The voice sounds familar...
Did Nickelodeon ever get their hands on the Quantel Paintbox? I know their cousin MTV did.
They're both owned by the same company so I would think they had at least an access to one.
Yup! And I'm the artist that used it there. I worked a Nickelodeon studios in Orlando from 1990 to 1996 as the Sr. Graphic Designer. I did all the graphics for the shows in Orlando. I did Clarissa, Double Dare, Guts and more. Hundreds of graphics for promos too including 'Nick or Treat'. Nothing beats Paintbox even today. PS is garbage - primitive irritating little icons. Too bad it's gone.
@@dstmars1 tell us more
Eat your heart out, Jony Ive!!
Christian lol
Money for nothing and chicks for free
From the times when they assumed people would sit long enough for the final two frames with the name of the product.
It's like they were banging two rocks together in 1981 ! 250k for this trash.
They got the pixels crushed by the giant ADOBE beast
Unfortunately, that's true...
Tom Baker?
First to the key...
Is that Depeche Mode's Music For The Masses logo at 2:37?
Corvid I'm not sure you would have to ask around...
Sorry I don't remember it...
Before, it's Quantel Paintbox. Now, it's Adobe After Effects.
Mark Arca true
Basically 😅
Was this ever used for cartoons?
Not really, it didn't have quite a fancy animation function as it was very rudimentary. Often used for cycles like showing a neon logo flashing for instance.
lol this is so old they show Reagan.
HikikomoriGamer yes it is...
what