Cranston/Csuri Productions

Cranston/Csuri Productions (CCP) was an American computer animation company founded by computer scientist Chuck Csuri and based in Columbus, Ohio.[1] In 1981, Csuri obtained funding from local investor Robert Cranston Kanuth to commercially exploit computer animation technology created by Ohio State University's Computer Graphics Research Group (CGRG). CCP and CGRG shared a single facility on campus.

Csuri initially recruited six CGRG researchers to join the company: Wayne Carlson, Michael Collery, Marc Howard, Bob Marshall, Don Stredney, and Ed Tripp. Soon to follow were president James Kristoff (MetroLight), animator Maria Palazzi (ACCAD), John Berton, and Julian Gomez (Sun, Apple, NASA), creator of the animation system Twixt. The suite of production tools developed by CGRG for character animation, procedural effects, modeling, and rendering ultimately saw use in approximately 800 groundbreaking animated television and advertising projects.[2] Paul Sidlo (RezN8) joined the team as creative director and launched the design department, which was staffed by Ron Tsang, Paul Conley, Steve Martino (Blue Sky), and John Weber.

CCP shut down late in 1987 following the collapse of promising initial efforts to license its software, which ran only on expensive mainframe computers.[3] By the late '80s, computer animation production had begun to switch from mainframes to cheaper desktop computers with 3D graphics capabilities, such as SGI workstations running retail software like Alias Wavefront. This change not only launched many new competing production houses, but also rapidly eliminated the market for mainframe-based graphics products. CGRG, renamed the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD), remains in operation.

References
  1. Hayward, Philip (1990). Culture, Technology & Creativity in the Late Twentieth Century. London: J. Libbey. p. 45. ISBN 0861962664. OCLC 29033757.
  2. Carlson, Wayne. "A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation". OSU Dept. of Design. Ohio State University. Archived from the original on 2015-07-31. Retrieved 2015-07-24.
  3. Sito, Tom (2013). Moving Innovation: A History of Computer Animation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. p. 172. ISBN 0262314312. OCLC 936201609.


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