A Computer Animated Hand (1972)

One of the earliest examples of 3D computer animation, made in 1972 by Ed Catmull, later a Pixar co-founder, as a University of Utah graduate project with Fred Parke. The one-minute film shows the hand turning, opening and closing, pointing at the viewer and flexing its fingers, and ends with a shot that seems to travel up inside it. What makes it a milestone is the workflow: Catmull modeled his own left hand, digitized it and animated it in a 3D animation program he wrote himself. He worked out concepts here that later computer graphics built on, and the footage reached Hollywood when it was incorporated into the 1976 film Futureworld. The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2011.