History of Animation

ART IN MOTION

The desire to animate is as old as art itself. Early man drew pictures on cave walls, attempting to depict motion by showing animals with multiple superimposed legs. The vases of ancient Greece with their gods and heroesand the friezes of Rome with their battling warriors and galloping steeds, also sought to capture, in static images, the dynamics of action. It was only in the 19th century, in the years leading up to the invention of the motion picture, that animated pictures became a real possibility.

Here is an extract from the book "Animation Art" that sums up the origin and evoltion of Animation as we know it now.

The early days of animation were filled with invention and novelty - on screen and behind the scenes. This was an era of experimentation, where techniques being created and refined. Brave newspaper cartoonists attempted to adapt their pen and ink creations to the moving screen - and most of them succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Standardization of production methods was quickly established, and then the storytellers, artists and film-makers took over. At first they told jokes, then proceeded to telling stories with original characters, classic fables and comic-strip adaptations. They tried live-action combined with animation, stop-motion, pixilation, silhouette animation, sound cartoons and colour. They then made documentaries, instructional films and pure visual art. But it was not easy...

Winsor McCay drew complete scenes - background settings and moving characters - for every frame of motion-picture film, and there were 24 frames per second. Earl Hurd improved upon this by drawing characters individually on celluloid (cels) over static background paintings. Raoul Barre created registration pegs so animator's drawings would align under the camera. Otto Mesmer animated characters that could think, while Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks gave their cartoon drawings real personality.

It was the beginning of a new visual medium where anything was possible. In thse pioneer days before sound, the artists sharpened their skills and created an industry.

OPTICAL TOYS - the precursor to animation

In the 17th to 19th centuries, simple animation devices were invented long before film projectors: the Thaumatrope, Phenakistoscope, Praxinoscope, Zoetrope, Stroboscope, Magic Lantern and Mutoscope. These were more complex versions of the flip book, often using drawings, paintings, photos, or slides on rotating card/s or cylinder. These "optical toys" tricked the eye into believing that the images were moving. The light source was often an oil lamp, light bulb, or none (natural light).

The Magic Lantern (1671)
The Magic Lantern was classed as the ancestor of the modern day projector. It consisted of a translucent oil painting and a simple lamp. When put together in a darkened room, the image would appear larger on a flat surface. Athanasius Kircher spoke about this originating from China in the 1600’s.

Thaumatrope (1824)
A Thaumatrope was a toy used in the Victorian era. It was a disk or card with two different pictures on each side is attached to two pieces of string. When the strings were twirled quickly between the fingers the two pictures appear to combine into a single image. The creator of this small but yet important invention is clouded. People believe that John Aryton Paris was the creator whereas others believe Charles Babbage was.

Phenakistoscope (1831)
One variant of the phenakistoscope was a spinning disc mounted vertically on a handle. Around the center of the disc a series of pictures was drawn corresponding to frames of the animation; around its circumference was a series of radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror.

Zoetrope (1832)
A Zoetrope is a device which creates the image of a moving picture. This contraption was produced in 1834 by George Horner. The device is basically a cylinder with vertical slits around the sides. Around the inside edge of the cylinder there are a series of pictures on the opposite side to the slits. As the cylinder is spun, the user then looks through the slits producing the illusion of motion.

Praxinoscope (1877)
The Praxinoscope, invented by French scientist Charles-Émile Reynaud, was a more sophisticated version of the zoetrope. It used the same basic mechanism of a strip of images placed on the inside of a spinning cylinder, but instead of viewing it through slits, it was viewed in a series of stationary mirrors around the inside of the cylinder, so that the animation would stay in place, and also provided a clearer image. Reynaud also developed a larger version of the praxinoscope that could be projected onto a screen, called the Théâtre Optique.

Flip book (1868)
The first flip book was patented in 1868 by a John Barnes Linnet. This was another step closer to the development of animation. Like the Zoetrope, the Flip Book creates the illusion of motion. A set of sequential pictures seen at a high speed creates this effect.

and finally...

Film animation
The history of film animation began in the 1890s with the earliest days of silent films and continues through the present day. The first animated film was created by Charles-Émile Reynaud, inventor of the praxinoscope, an animation system using loops of 12 pictures. On October 28, 1892 at Musée Grévin in Paris, France he exhibited animations consisting of loops of about 500 frames, using his Théâtre Optique system - similar in principle to a modern film projector. This day is now observed as International Animation Day around the world.

The first animated work on standard picture film was Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) by J. Stuart Blackton. It features a cartoonist drawing faces on a chalkboard, and the faces apparently coming to life.

Fantasmagorie, by the French director Émile Cohl (also called Émile Courtet), is also noteworthy. It was screened for the first time on August 17, 1908 at Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris. Émile Courtet later went to Fort Lee, New Jersey near New York City in 1912, where he worked for French studio Éclair and spread its technique in the US.

The first puppet-animated film was The Beautiful Lukanida (1912) by the Russian-born (ethnically Polish) director Wladyslaw Starewicz (Ladislas Starevich).

The first animated feature film was El Apóstol, made in 1917 by Quirino Cristiani from Argentina. He also directed two other animated feature films, including 1931's Peludopolis, the first to use synchronized sound. None of these, however, survive to the present day. The earliest-surviving animated feature, which used colour-tinted scenes, is the silhouette-animated Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) directed by German Lotte Reiniger and French/Hungarian Berthold Bartosch. Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), often considered to be the first animated feature when in fact at least eight were previously released, was the nevertheless first to use Technicolor and the first to become successful within the English-speaking world.