Beyond the Mind's Eye

even though the technology now is way beyond what was possible in 1992, Beyond the Mind's Eye is a landmark work of computer animation and imagination. Its artfulness, beauty, and thoughtfulness will remain. wonderful music by Jan Hammer help to make each segment unique and enduring.

Beyond the Mind's Eye - indeed.

BEYOND THE MINDS EYE is a surreal voyage bridging the gap between reality and imagination. Travel through the inner depths of the human psyche to the outer reaches of the universe. BEYOND explores worlds that may exist in alternate dimensions - or only in the minds of the worlds leading computer animators.

"Brilliant" - Steven Churchill

"Surreal" - Michael Boydstun

"Real, yet imaginative" - Jan Hammer

"As 'modern Fantasia' this video steps BEYOND" - G. Paul Sullivan

Comprised of mini-stories; including Afternoon Adventure, Theater of Magic, and Nothing But Love.

You will have some real afternoon delight.

First, let me say that I am a true fan of Jan Hammer's work (after all he made Miami Vice watchable). But under "altered" moods, Hendrix "Electric Ladyland" and some dark/colorful room lighting makes this movie a true experience ;-)

The tracks and ideas in this video are much better defined than in the original Mind's Eye. This series of videos really were on the cutting edge of the ray-tracing technology available. So what you see in this video is probably some of the best ray-tracing/modeling that could be done at that time. But as this series goes on, you can see most of the artists moving towards a style of realism and away from the surreal.

I was quite interested to seeing 'Beyond The Mind's Eye' strictly to see if the computer animation would hold up. I mean, this was released in 1993 (causing a bit of a fuss if I remember), and of course, computer animation has grown in tremendous leaps and bounds since then. After watching this, I have to say I enjoyed it, the whole thing followed a curious pattern (It seems that 75% of the time we were either following something or going for a ride). About the animation itself, it seemed to flow quite smoothly, with some slow motion happening. Not too sure if this was done intentionally or if this was too much for the computer to handle. The whole thing actually plays out like an extended demo reel, with scenes usually not lasting more then a minute then going to the next "look what else we can do!" moment. I have no idea how influential this was, but I am sure I've seen some of these ideas used since.. Like the running cat? The kissing couple that twist and turn into one abstract being? The instrument players? Someone help me.