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History of Animation

Alexander Lee GD 150 9/2/2010 History of Animation Animation began to develop in 1824 when a British physician, named Peter Mark Roget, described the concept of “persistence of vision,” which means that the pictures appear to create the illusion of motion as we quickly look and retain them one by one. 1 In the 1870s, Eadweard Muybridge started his photographic gathering of animals and humans in motion. 2 While he was in the West Coast, he experimented and recorded the movements of a galloping horse.

In 1878, Muybridge successfully did his first experiment on chronophotography, in which he used a multiple series of cameras to record a horse’s gallops. This was very amazing to witness. It was like we’re watching the horse race on T. V. today. Muybridge’s work and dedication to art were the starting points where the development of early motion pictures began to take place. In 1882, E. J. Marey constructed a camera (so called photographic gun) that could take multiple photos per second of moving animals or humans – called chronophotography or serial photography.

It was similar to Muybridge’s work on taking multiple exposed images of running horses. Marey was able to record multiple images of a subject’s movement on the same camera plate, rather than the individual images Muybridge had produced. In 1887, Thomas Edison started his research work into motion pictures. In 1889, Edison announced his creation of the kinetoscope. In 1895, Louis and Augustine Lumiere issued a patent for a device called a cinematograph capable of projecting moving pictures. Therefore, motion pictures are still used in animations and films today. J.

Stuart Blackton was possibly the first American filmmaker to use the techniques of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation. 3 Introduced to filmmaking by Edison, he pioneered these concepts at the turn of the 20th century, with his first copyrighted work dated 1900. Several of his films, among them The Enchanted Drawing (1900) and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) were film versions of Blackton’s “lightning artist” routine, and utilized modified versions of Geroges Melies’ early stop-motion techniques to make a series of blackboard drawings appear to move and reshape themselves. Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’ is regularly cited as the first true animated film, and Blackton is considered the first true animator. Another French artist, Emile Cohl, began drawing cartoon strips and created a film in 1908 called Fantasmagorie. The film largely consisted of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There were also sections of live action where the animator’s hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look.

This makes Fantasmagorie the first animated film created using what came to be known as traditional (hand-drawn) animation. Following the successes of Blackton and Cohl, many other artists began experimenting with animation. One such artist was Winsor McCay, a successful newspaper cartoonist, who created detailed animations that required a team of artists to collaborate. Each frame was drawn on paper; which invariably required backgrounds and characters to be redrawn and animated. Among McCay’s most noted films are Little Nemo (1911), Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918).

The production of animated short films, typically referred to as “cartoons”, became an industry of its own during the 1910s, and cartoon shows were produced to be shown in movie theaters. Animation is the reason why cartoons are still producing in numbers of episodes today. Cartoons not only inspire kids to become artists, but also give them an idea of how the animation is made to entertain people. References: 1. ^ http://www. filmsite. org/pre20sintro. html 2. ^ http://www. fi. edu/learn/sci-tech/motion-pictures/motion-pictures. php? cts=photography 3. ^ http://www. awn. com/articles/one-hundred-years-ago-animation-began

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