History of Animation

A Basic Summary of Animation: Past, Present and Future.

The Past

Cave paintings

Early examples of attempts to capture the phenomenon of motion into a still drawing can be found in paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are depicted with multiple legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to convey the perception of motion.[1]

Athens

One of the most earliest successful depictions of an image in motion is evident in the Greek era. Ex. A Parthenon frieze relief which depicts a series of horses that appear to gallop at increasing speeds as they progress.

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 that was 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.

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. The Mutoscope (1894) is essentially a flip book in a box with a crank handle to flip the pages.

The Present

Stop Motion

Stop Motion is used for many animation productions using physical objects rather than images, as with traditional animation. An object will be photographed, moved slightly, and then photographed again. When the pictures are played back in normal speed the object will appear to move by itself. This process is used for many productions, for example, clay animations such as Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit, as well as animated movies which use poseable figures, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Sometimes even objects are used, such as with the films of Jan Svankmajer.

Stop motion animation was also commonly used for special effects work in many live- CGI Animation

Computer-generated imagery changed animated films forever. The first fully computer generated feature film created was Toy Story, produced by Pixar Animation Studios in 1995. Toy Story proved that companies were slowly making the transition from traditional animation to CGI animation. The process of CGI animation is still very tedious and similar in that sense to traditional animation, and it still adheres to many of the same principles.
A principal difference of CGI Animation compared to traditional animation is that drawing is replaced by 3D modeling, though a form of animation that combines the two worlds can be considered to be computer aided animation but on 2D computer drawing (which can be considered close to traditional drawing and sometimes based on it).

The Future

Animated Humans

Most CGI created films are based on animal characters, monsters, machines or cartoon-like humans. Animation studios are now trying to develop ways of creating realistic-looking humans. A film that attempted this was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, in 2001. However, due to the complexity of the human body functions, emotions and interactions, this method of animation is rarely used. Of principal complexity is the creation of a convincing human face model. Of secondary complexity but still a modern approach are techniques for the production of convincing hair or cloth movement. Later this form was tried again by scanning humans into computers such as the movie Beowulf in 2007.

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.
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.

 Europe

History of Czech animation

History of Estonian animation

History of French animation

The first animated cartoon (1908), and most animation techniques: morphing (1909), puppet animation and color animated cartoon (1910), pixilation (1911), first animated series (Le chien Flambeau, 1916).

History of Italian animation

History of Russian animation

[edit] History of animation in Croatia (in former Yugoslavia)

North and South America

History of Argentinian animation

History of Canadian animation

History of Cuban animation

History of United States animation

Because the history of Hollywood animation as an art form has undergone many changes in its hundred-year history, Wikipedia presents four separate chapters in the development of its animation:
Animation in the United States during the silent era (1900s through 1920s)

The Golden Age of Hollywood animation (1930s and 1940s)

Animation in the United States in the television era (1950s through 1980s)

Modern animation of the United States (1980s through present)

Asia

History of Iranian animation

The oldest records of animation in Persia (Iran) dates back to 5000 years ago. An animated piece on an earthen goblet that belongs to 5000 years ago was found in Burnt City in Sistan and Baluchestan Province, southeastern Iran. On this ancient piece that can be called the first animation of the world, the artist has portrayed a goat that jumps toward a tree and eats its leaves.
The art of animation as practiced in modern day began in Iran in the 1950s. Iran's animation owes largely to the animator Noureddin Zarrinkelk. Zarrinkelk was instrumental in founding the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (IIDCYA) in Tehran in collaboration with the late father of Iranian graphics Morteza Momayez and other fellow artists like Farshid Mesghali, Ali Akbar Sadeghi, and Arapik Baghdasarian.[2]

History of Chinese animation

History of Japanese animation (Anime)

Found recently in Kyoto, the film depicts a boy wearing a sailor uniform performing a salute. The film dates back to around the year 1900 and is on 35mm Celluloid, composed of 50 frames put together with paste

Source: Wikipedia

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