Cassiopeia (1996 film)

Cassiopéia  is a Brazilian digital animation film produced and directed by NDR Filmes and released in 1996 by PlayArte, directed by animator Clóvis Vieira. The film tells the story of the planet Athena, located in the constellation Cassiopeia, which one day is attacked by space invaders who begin to suck its life energy; A distress signal is sent into outer space by local astronomer Liza and picked up by four heroes who travel across the galaxy to save the planet.
Cassiopeia competed with the American Toy Story (from Disney/Pixar) for the title of the first animated feature made in CGI in the world.  The controversy is caused by the fact that the Americans used clay molds to be scanned digitally, the so-called rotoscoping (which would not make it 100% digital), while the Brazilian production was entirely carried out in CGI, with images generated by pure computer graphics , without any external image scanning or vectorization of real models. Despite this, Toy Story can be considered the pioneer in digital animation as it was released almost three months before Cassiopeia. It should be noted that the producers of Cassiopéia accused Disney of trying to sabotage the Brazilian production, such as planning an invasion of the production company to steal CDs with the film's work and, thus, delay its release, but they did not present evidence of what claim. 
The film was released in February 1996 in Brazilian theaters.  In 2017, the Brazilian Association of Film Critics (Abraccine) conducted a survey to name the one hundred best Brazilian animations in history, with Cassiopeia occupying the fourteenth position in the final list.
== Plot ==
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The planet Athena, located in the constellation of Cassiopeia, is a place inhabited by robotic beings who use a kind of energy harvested from their star to live. At the site's control center, Dr. Liza and her researchers discover that a strange body located in some quadrants of the planet is causing the reduction of Ateneia's vital energy, seriously compromising the survival of the planet's beings. The researchers send sensors into space to find out what is happening, but the radars are destroyed by the strange object, although it is possible to notice, before the destruction of the sensors, that the body is a gigantic ship. Within it are malevolent pirate invaders led by Commander Shadowseat who are stealing the planet's energy for themselves. The villains try to forge a benevolent communication with the Atheneia control center but are quickly discovered by the researchers of the planet, although they are unable to make any effort against them. Despite being close to the planet, the crew of Commander Shadowseat are unable to detect the exact location of Ateneia and they search hard for the origin of the sensors, discovering only the quadrant where the radars came from, but not the planet.
As Atheneia's vital energy decreases because of the invaders, the inhabitants of the small planet become increasingly weak. Unable to send a distress call, Liza suggests that "rescue capsules" with coded messages be launched through space for someone to come and save the planet. Before the launch of the capsules, the planet is put into a state of hibernation while the population of Atheneia retires to their homes to save energy. The captain of Shadowseat's ship and his mate are sent to the quadrant of origin of the aforementioned destroyed radars of Ateneia that had been discovered by the crew of the Mothership of the villains. Meanwhile, in a last-ditch effort, the rescue capsules are finally released by Dr Liza, which is now very weak inside the Atheneia control center due to the low energy of the planet. The four capsules, however, are discovered by the captain and the mate of the Mothership and they decide to destroy them, but they cannot, as their material proves to be resistant against the destructive rays of the small ship of the villains; they then decide to modify their courses and change their data. The malefics manage to make changes in three of them, but, when realizing the change in the courses of the capsules in the control center, Liza manages to save the last one of them before finally passing out because of the low energy; the fourth capsule, then, shoots out of range of the villains' ship, although they managed to modify only the coded data of the object, but not the course. The captain,
Meanwhile, in the constellation of Pegasus , Chip and Chop, two robots belonging to a team of guardians of the galaxy, are on a mission to combat an intruder in a vital galactic system. After fighting the enemy, the two friends find one of the rescue capsules orbiting nearby and collect it for analysis in the team's laboratory. Upon returning to base, they are met by the other two members of the group, Feel and Thot, and they all examine the capsule; they discover the object's origin dimension but find it difficult to obtain data, since the information was erased by Shadowseat's henchmen. Still, during the examination, the heroes identify a communication channel that the capsule is making with the other three and leave with their ship in search of the other remaining capsules.
On the enemy ship, the first mate decides to betray his captain and notifies Commander Shadowseat that one of the capsules escaped being tampered with, causing the Commander to rage and the captain to be removed from his position; the first mate, in turn, tries to ask Shadowseat to occupy the position because of his "loyalty", but the Commander denies it fearing he will be the next to be betrayed by him. The Mothership crew is still working hard to discover the origin of the capsules.
Far away, the four heroes are looking for the other three capsules. They find the second capsule in one of the rings of an implied planet. The group finds it very difficult to rescue the object, as it is right in the middle of the crystalline rocky rings that violently attract and repel each other. In the midst of this, the small crew's ship is seriously hit by one of these crystals, forcing the beings to use a "reserve ship". After that, the team manages to collect the capsule and rescue Chip, who had left through a mobile part of the ship to help in the search for the object amid the dangerous crystals, and everyone leaves in search of the third rescue capsule.
The third capsule is detected on an isolated planet. Landing there, Thot and Chip end up meeting the inventor and painter Leonardo (a clear reference to Leonardo da Vinci ) and his mascot Galileo, and they reveal that they are in charge of the third capsule and give it to Chip and Thot. After collecting the capsule, the agents say goodbye to Leonardo and Galileo and head back to the ship in search of the last capsule. Meanwhile, the villains manage to detect two likely locations where the planet of origin of the capsules may be and decide to send two fleets to each place to look for the planet which they are stealing energy and destroy its energy plants.
Guardian heroes find the fourth and final capsule located very close to a black hole, which makes the rescue of the object dangerous. Despite the imminent danger, the group manages to collect the capsule, but they are devastated when they discover, through the adulterated codes of the objects, a list of more than 1300 planets that could have launched the capsules, which would take months to verify all the bodies. celestials from the list. This makes the heroes lose hope of making any effort to help the planet in trouble, but Chip remembers that all planets have a vibrating sound pattern and quickly seeks to discover which of the bodies is tampered with in the pattern. Through this mode, the four friends finally discover that the planet that is in trouble is Atenéia and they immediately leave for it.
Upon arriving there, the heroes are faced with the pre-attack of the Shadowseat ships and discover that Ateneia is in a state of hibernation and almost without energy. They move to the control center and transfer all the ship's energy to the main buildings of Atheneia. Feel finds all the employees unconscious in the control center, and one of them wakes up and helps with the tasks of saving the planet; in the laboratory, Thoth finds Dr. Liza in a very critical state with very little energy, she is taken to a restorer while the group tries to restore energy to the planet. Through fighter ships, Shadowseat's henchmen begin the attack on the power station, but are partially stopped by the four heroes' ship. The henchmen call for reinforcements to destroy the small ship of the heroes while more ships head towards the Atheneia power plant, taking full control of the situation. However, when everything seems to be lost, Leonardo and Galileo appear in the skies of Atheneia guiding ships in different formats, satisfactorily armed and made by himself, to the surprise of everyone, who wonders how they got there. Leonardo and Galileo start to help the group of heroes in the battle that follows using their trinkets; despite having his ship shot down, after having started dominating enemy ships for a while, Leonardo is still able to fight back and helps the group overwhelm the villains with his makeshift weapons. Shortly afterwards, Leonardo reveals that he had examined the capsule that was in his possession before handing it over to the hero robots; through it, he discovered some information about anti-gravity systems and built floating ships to follow the heroes, ending up in Atheneia.
The enemies then decide to attack from a distance and move away from the planet. Chip and Chop, aboard their ship, give chase and are captured by one of the henchmen's fighters; the villains overheat the robots' small ship and they, in turn, decide to use their last spare ship to escape (while the previous ship explodes after the heroes escape). With the new ship, the robots manage to annihilate the villains by shooting the henchmen's long-range weapons and they flee. Upon returning to the Mothership, Shadowseat decided not to attack further and just wait to capture the last stores of energy before fleeing.
The heroes come up with a plan to try to stop the villains' continuous energy drain: Chip and Chop approach the villains' Mothership, which in turn triggers a magnetic belt to surround the robots' small ship. Chip and Chop suffer several attacks orchestrated by the enemies, but manage to escape all of them. Meanwhile, Leonardo and Galileo deploy a system in Athena's orbit to prevent enemy energy theft, but their efforts are ineffective. Galileo then goes down alone back to the planet until he arrives at the restorer where Dr. Liza is, he operates a kind of mutation in Liza's body, transforming her into a huge moon that starts to reflect all the solar energy .to Atheneia, saving the planet from low energy. Afterwards, the Central Galactic Council fleets appear and arrest Shadowseat and his cronies; the villains are sentenced to detention on a planet isolated from any technology for several generations.
With the place safe, Ateneia's energy flow is normalized, putting an end to the planet's state of hibernation and saving all inhabitants. The power plant advisers formally thank the heroes for their help. Leonardo hands over a picture he painted of Liza (who is portrayed in a similar pose to the Mona Lisa ) and says that if it weren't for her knowledge they wouldn't have been able to save the planet. The film ends with a vision of Athena and her Moon formed by Liza's mutation together with the sun.
== Cast (Dubbing) ==
Actor/Actress 	Characters
Osmar Prado 	Leonardo
Jonas Mello 	Shadowseat
Aldo Cesar 	Commander of the Central Galactic Council
Marcelo Campos 	chip
Cassius Romero 	chop
Fabio Moura 	feel
Hermes Barolli 	Thoth
Rosa Maria Barolli	Liza
Ezio Ramos 	counselor
Flávio Dias 	counselor
Francisco Bretas 	Robot
elcio sodre 	Captain / First Mate
Carlos Silveira 	Engineer
Cecília Lemes 	Ambient voice of heroes
== Production ==
The production of Cassiopéia was directed by animator Clóvis Vieira and had a team of 3 animation directors and 11 animators, working on a network of 17 microcomputers 486 DX2-66. The first character model was made on a 20Mhz 386 SX. The software used was Topas Animator produced by Crystal Graphics, which was already obsolete at the time of production. 
The film began production in January 1992 with the modeling of environments and characters and the creation of the story and script. The characters and scenes were designed from basic geometric figures, such as spheres, cubes and cylinders, which would facilitate the rendering process. 
In January 1993 , the animation process began. The imaging work ended in August 1995 . The soundtrack was completed in December 1995, and the first copy was ready in January 1996 . 
=== Difficulties in production ===
With only 6 months left for the completion of the film, the NDR studios were invaded and some CDs that archived some Cassiopeia processes were stolen, forcing the production company to reshoot several scenes, later causing the delay of its release. 
Another major difficulty was finding a company to distribute the film. PlayArte accepted to distribute the film at the time, however it did so during the 1996 Olympics, causing the film to lose a lot of attention from the media, which released little information about its theatrical release. With the exception of TV Cultura, it was very difficult to see teasers of the film on Brazilian stations, which at the time were very focused on the aforementioned sporting event. 
== Repercussion ==
=== Launch ===
The film was shown in theaters in Brazil on February 1, 1996.  The film was part of a special screening for children on April 11 , 1996, in the city of Curitiba , capital of the State of Paraná , to 261 students from the PIÁ project (integrated education project of the city hall of this capital) in a program prepared by the Cultural Foundation of Curitiba.
The film was released on DVD in 2005 by Cultura Marcas . 
=== Critical Reception ===
As of April 2021, the film has an average of 2.9 on a scale ranging from 0 to 10 based on 7 reviews from users of the website DoraCinema.  On IMDB the film has a rating of 6.7 stars based on 204 audience ratings. 
The Brazilian Association of Film Critics (Abraccine) classified Cassiopeia as the fourteenth best Brazilian animation in history in a list of one hundred productions. 
== Primacy and Controversy ==
Cassiopeia , although it does not enjoy the same status or international projection, competes with the North American animation Toy Story for the title of the first fully digital animation film.  The controversy revolves around the criteria for establishing what is an entirely digital film. As Pixar Studios created the molds for the main characters' heads in clay, which were later scanned with Polhemus 3D,  there is an argument in favor of the primacy of Cassiopeia, since the Brazilian production was created from entirely virtual models, without the use of physical models, from modeling to textures. This difference in criteria is defended by Brazilian animators as an argument for considering Cassiopeia the first film entirely made in CGI, even though it was released months after Toy Story . 
According to Clóvis Vieira, when the Pixar producers found out that Cassiopeia had 40 minutes of the film ready, they rushed to produce Toy Story , even using the rotoscoping technique to speed things up.  In an interview for Risca Faca, Clóvis stated:[...] Disney knew we were making an all-digital movie. When they realized we were ahead, they ran to Pixar, owned by Steve Jobs, which had projects in the area. So Disney dumped $30 million into Jobs' lap to finish before us. Personally, I'm happy to have Disney and Jobs running after us for a while. Today, we lose from a thousand to zero. But this dispute was good for both parties”. According to Patrícia De Rossi, daughter of producer Nello de Rossi, there is still a suspicion about the aforementioned "assault" on NDR studios to benefit the Americans: "It was deliberate for Disney to say that it launched first. Americans like to do it first. believes it was intentional sabotage".  However, nothing has been proven to date about the perpetrators of this theft.
== Legacy ==
Unlike its main rival Toy Story , Cassiopéia fell into oblivion from the public: while the North American production originated a franchise with three sequels due to its enormous success, the Brazilian production is very little remembered. The film's producers tried to make a sequel that would use state-of-the-art equipment and software, with 3DS Max being the main tool, but the project was shelved in 2002 due to lack of investment and also the bankruptcy of NDR Filmes.
However, director Clóvis Vieira says he is proud of the film: "[..] We took milk from a stone. [...] We did the best that anyone in Brazil would do under the same conditions", and concludes: "It didn't make money, but I slept happy knowing that I once rivaled Steve Jobs and Disney .” 
Cassiopeia can be viewed in full on YouTube. The feature was posted on the site with the authorization of director Clóvis Vieira. [ citation needed ]
== TV show ==
The film was shown for the first time on Television Pay on TV Rá-Tim-Bum on August 25, 2005,  and on TV Aberta on TV Cultura on October 12, 2005, as part of the celebrations of the of Children.  Both stations belong to the Padre Anchieta Foundation.
== Trivia ==
* The First Fully CGI Animated Movie (Toy Story (1995) used models to make the characters).
* The first computer animated feature length film to be produced and distributed in Brazil.
* Second full length CGI movie After Toy Story (1995). The 3rd one would later be Antz (1998) by Dreamworks Animation.
* The second computer-animated film after Toy Story (1995).
* The first computer-animated film to be rated U (Universal Audiences) by the BBFC.
* Midway through production, the house where the team worked was robbed during the night, and many CD-ROMs containing finished work and backups were stolen, delaying production for a few months. Some people in Brazil claimed that the robbery was orchestrated by Disney to delay the work, but there is no legal evidence to corroborate that theory.
* Production began in January 1992 with writing and 3D modeling. Animation began in January 1993, and rendering was completed on August 1995. The soundtrack was finished by December 1995, and the first copy was printed in January 1996.
* The film was animated using Crystal Graphics TOPAS Animator, running on 17 PC computers with 486 DX2-66 processors. The first character model was made on a 20 MHz 386-SX. The animation team was comprised of seven computer animators, three traditional animators and some freelancers.
* This film along with Toy Story (1995) are the only computer-animated films to not be released consecutively, starting with Antz (1998) from DreamWorks Animation and A Bug's Life (1998) from Disney/Pixar, computer-animated films started to be released theatrically every year.
== External links ==
* Official site via Internet Archive
* History of ten years of digital production includes Brazilians ( PDF )