Persistence of vision - creating a series of images that create the illusion that movement has been given to an object or form.
Sequential imagery has been around since 3000bc.
Some of the early devices used to capture images:
- The Magic Lantern- Invented by Christian Huygens in 1650. A box with a parabolic mirror at the back focussed the light through a hand drawn slide and then through a lens that could be adjusted to be focussed.
- The Thaumatrope- Simple spinning disc that when spun fast enough make it feel like both images are there.
- The Phenakistoscope- Invented in 1831 by Joseph Plateau and Simon von Stampfer. It consists of two disks, one being hand held with slots inserted around the radius, and a series of sequential images on the background disk.
- The Zoetrope- Created in 1834 a device similar to the phenakistoscope, but much more practical.
- The Kineograph (flip book)1868
Animation in the 20th Century:
Some of the earliest produced animations start with pieces such as Georges Melies' A trip to the moon (1902), which was a combination of stop motion and live action. Two more early breakthroughs include Emile Cohl's Fantasmagorie (1908), which was drawn in pencil and then photographed on to negative film, and also Windsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur (1908) which was the first film to use animation techniques such as key frames, registration marks and tracing paper.
Fantasmagorie
A Trip to the Moon
Gertie the Dinosaur
Windsor McCay also created a piece of propaganda animation entitled Sinking of the Lusitana (1918). It was over 12 minutes long and consisted of over 27000 frames, longest animation at the time of its release.
The Golden Age of Cartoons 1928-1957
By 1928, Animation had developed enough of a language in itself, both technically, artistically and commercially.
This meant that they were no longer classed as just means of 'high art' but also profitable and extremely popular. In other words, cartoons had become mainstream.
People like the Fleischer Brothers, Reynaud, Steiwicz and Reiniger had paved the way and produced funny films that entertained wide audiences. Although one mans creative vision pulled all of this together... Walt Disney.
Disney's first major piece of animation was Steamboat Willie in 1928. Unlike other animators, Disney had cracked how to synchronise moving picture with sound, which was done by the animator responding to the piece of music. This was also done in The Skeleton Dance.
Disney had its competitors. In 1930, Starewicz created The Tale of the Fox which was the first animation to personify animals, giving them human qualities. It took 10 years to make!
Fleischer also produced works such as Popeye and Dizzy Dishes which introduced the character 'Betty Boop', which at the time was a little controversial and somewhat absurd having animals and human characters intertwining and having flirtatious relationships.
A ground breaking piece of animation was also created in the wartime, which was entitled Colour Box by Len Lye. This never-seen-before technique of animation consisted of painting emulsion paint onto film to create a psychedelic burst of colour. This inspired many commercial Graphic Designers in the field of advertising.
The next major breakthrough piece of animation was Disney's Snow White, which had a budget of $1.7 million, Disney had to remortgage his house and had 1000 people working on it!
In 1939 World War Two hit, and Disney was commissioned to produce a number propaganda fils during this time to support the war effort. This was controversial but also a good thing to keep Disney up and running during the Wartime.
Some other great pieces of animation and films during the Golden age include:
- The Brotherhood of Man (1945)-UPA Flms
- Gerald McBoing-Boing (1951)- UPA Films
- Neighbours (1952)- Norman McLaren
- Duck Amuck (1953)- Chuck Jones
- Animal Farm (1954)- Hans and Batchelor
- The Man with the Golden Arm (1954)- Saul Bass
The Television Age 1958-1985
The Golden Age of Aimation car to a close in the late 50's when the practice of having Block booking animated shorts with a feature film came to an end. Cinema houses wanted to show double bills and matinees to comet with TV.
The rise in popularity of television want that broadcasters wanted large quantities of programming on low budgets, resulting in big changes being made to animation production methods.
Hanna-Barbera was one of the companies that mass produced cartoon shorts, with programmes such as The Flintstones and Huckleberry Hound.
Many other animated programmes took television by storm in the 1960's, including Stan Brakhage's Mothlight, Ray Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts, Gordon Murray's Camberwick Green.
In the 70's, as far as production processes were concerned the overall standard of animation stayed on a constant, with companies working to the bone to produce a vast level of material to keep television audiences entertained. This decade saw the birth of Star Wars, A Christmas Carol, The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (which stayed in Norwegian cinemas for over a decade!) and the infamous Watership Down.
The Digital Age 1985 Onwards
John Lassater and Steve Jobs founded Pixar in 1986; their first production was Luxo.Jr. which was considered groundbreaking at the time as the short showed the potential that 3D computer software had.
Following from Pixar, other popular animations and short films included Jimmy Murakami's When the Wind Blows (1986), presenting a survival story of Nuclear attack, Joanna Quinn's Girls Night Out (1987), Studio Ghibli's My Neighbiur Toronto (1988) and not forgetting Disney's Who Framed Rodger Rabbit (1988). This was the first ever film that featured both animated and real-life characters within the same frames.
As the animation/live action theme began to develop, Speilberg Produced Jurassic Park in 1993 which saw the combination of anamatronic and CGI being used to bring the dinosaurs to life.
In 1995, Pixar made a return with Toy Story, which was the first fully computer animated feature film.
Contrasting with computer generated methods, Aardman went back to basics by using traditional stop motion with 3-D characters made from plasticine in the Wallace and Gromit films.
Some popular works of animation from the late 90's onwards:
- Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998)
- Michael Dudok de Witt's Father and Daughter (2000)
- Jamie Hewlett- Gorillaz- Clint Eastwood (2001)
- Sylvian Chomet's Le Triplettes of Belleville (2003)
- Marjane Satarpi's Persepolis (2007)
- Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir (2008)
- Henry Selick's Coraline (2009)
- James Cameron's Avatar (2009)
- Michaela Pavlatova's Tram (2012)
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