Columbia Pictures: Difference between revisions

'''Availability:''' Common. Sony is much better at keeping older theatrical logos on current releases of their films than [[Sony Pictures Television Studios|their TV output]] (which is another story). In the early days of [[Sony Pictures Home Entertainment|Columbia Pictures' video division]], however, this logo would be plastered by their home video logo (although the "Columbia Pictures" text alone would be seen for a split second, possibly due to poor editing). Otherwise, all later video releases, DVDs/Blu-rays, and TV broadcasts retain this logo.

*The logo's most recent overhaul was undertaken during this era when Sony Corporation of Japan (which bought Columbia on November 8, 1989) commissioned illustrator Michael J. Deas to redesign the lady and return her to her "classic" look. The result, based on Deas' sessions with Mandeville, Louisiana homemaker Jenny Joseph, who posed for him with a makeshift robe and torch, was a taller, slimmer Columbia Torch Lady with lighter, curlier hair and a dimmer torch. Rather than use Joseph's face however, Deas constructed a composite face made up of a couple of computer-generated features. Deas' artwork, created in 1992, was featured in the [[Columbia Pictures Television]] and [[Sony Pictures Home Entertainment|Columbia TriStar Home Video]] identities prior to this logo's appearance. The logo was animated at Kleiser/Walczak Construsction Company, now known as Synthespian Studios. Jeff Kleiser (the brother of Grease and Flight Of The Navigator director Randal Kleiser), and Diana Walczak were lead animators, while Ed Kramer and Joel Hynek assisted in production. The staff used 2D elements from Deas' painting, edited them using Adobe Photoshop running on an Apple Macintosh Quadra 950 workstation and converted them to 3D. The clouds were divided up to 66 image maps and Walczak mapped every cloud onto a 3D object and twist-distorted and translated on Alias/Wavefront Advanced Visualizer graphics software running on a Silicon Graphics Crimson Elan workstation. The woman was also converted to 3D by sculpting a real model and scanning it using a Polhemus 3-space digitizing pen.