The 25the The cinema gala hosted by Jay Du Temple on Sunday on Noovo will of course pay tribute to Daniel Langlois.
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But there’s a good chance little will be said about Peltrie’s Tony, the little seven-minute animated film that started it all. Tony, that funny pianist with a sad expression and an awkward, casual demeanor, nevertheless opened a whole new era of cinema, that of the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, Titanic and Lord of the Rings. Although Daniel Langlois is now considered Tony’s father, he did not “father” the child alone.
At the University of Montreal, Tony was born on a huge computer (less powerful than my current laptop!). Its long and difficult development was preceded by 1982’s Flight of Dream, a 13-minute animated film produced by Pierre Lachapelle, Philippe Bergeron and Pierre Robidoux using the Taarna software they developed. “Dream Flight” is a nice little film, but the images are so poor that they can’t move you.
However, they wanted to use this software to create Tony de Peltrie. This time the three friends team up with a certain Daniel Langlois, who works carefree at the National Film Board. After three years of hard work and the improvements Langlois made to his animation software, Tony de Peltrie finally saw the light of day.
A PLANETARY SUCCESS
Aside from a few movie and computer nerds, the film’s release caused little stir until its presentation at the Siggraph conference in San Francisco, where the entire IT elite of the United States gathered. Tony receives such an ovation that the world of cinema goes up in flames. Within a few months, the film won around twenty trophies and dozens of magazines praised it. In August 1985, Time magazine wrote that the film “made a spectacular breakthrough because it was the first time a computer-generated character could move people.”
Daniel Langlois then began selling shares in a new company he called Softimage. At the same time, I was involved with a whole team in setting up Télévision Quatre seasons. Since we wanted to create a TV that was off the beaten path, why not ask Langlois to animate the logo that my friends Jean St-Cyr and Jacques Roy had just designed? We could promote it by saying that it was made by the famous creator of Tony de Peltrie.
A GENIUS, WAY TOO SHY
Paul Pagé and my nephew Martin Fournier, who knew Daniel, brought him to my practice. The conversation was short and the order was awarded quickly. At a price Langlois never hoped for. His first commercial contract!
Before he left the office, Pagé whispered in my ear that Daniel was offering shares of Softimage, the company he had just founded, for $5,000 each. I told Langlois I was interested, but he blushed from ear to ear and told me I should just wait and see how he fulfilled the contract I had just given him. Animating the logo was obviously a piece of cake for him.
He was too shy to come back and see me, he never asked me. When he sold Softimage to Microsoft for $200 million in 1994, I wasn’t proud that I hadn’t relaunched this too-shy genius myself!