The World’s First 3-D Animation: Starchaser: The Legend of Orin The world’s first 3-D animated film was Starchaser: The Legend of Orin directed by ethnic Korean animator Hahn Sang-ho, better known as Steve Hahn. Hahn was a film major at the University of California-San Diego in the mid-70s. He got into animation after asking Ralph Bakshi, an American animation pioneer, to hire him as a subcontractor. Hahn went on to become one of the leaders of the Korean animation industry. He established Hanho HeungUp Co. in the 1970s and produced a number of animated works as a subcontractor. Around the same time, Hollywood studios started to gradually replace Japanese subcontractors with Korean ones. Hahn wanted to do more than be a subcontractor, though. He dreamed of creating original animated works both great and unprecedented. His goal was production of the world’s first 3-D animation. While 3-D live-action films had quite a long history, 3-D had never been tried in animation before. Originally budgeted at USD 2.5 million and a planned filming period of one year, the project ended up exceeding USD 10 million in cost and took 2.5 years. Creating 3-D using the cell animation method as opposed to the digital was a very difficult task with the technology available at the time.
Starchaser is a sci-fi adventure inspired by Star Wars with a young man named Orin and Princess Aviana as its main characters. The film was released at 1,020 theaters in North America on November 22, 1985, and earned USD 4.5 million in its first week. Starchaser would have made much more in other markets but the distributor Atlantic went bankrupt before that could happen. Tough times soon fell on Hahn, and the world’s first 3-D animation seemingly disappeared without a trace. From then on, he had to continue working as a subcontractor, but his pioneering achievement was reevaluated at the 2006 Seoul International Cartoon & Animation Festival. A little more than 20 years after Starchaser was released, the 65-year-old animation trailblazer won the Achievement Award in the animation category.
80 K-ANIMATION Befriending Children All Over the World
K-Animation Works Recognized Worldwide 81