The history of animation all started with a man named Peter Roget, who was a British Physician and Philologist. In 1824 Roget presented a presentation known as the "Persistence of vision in regards to moving objects." Despite the fact that Roget's description of the illusion was most likely incorrect, it was still very influential and inspirational because it made it seem possible. It was the start of documenting and identifying a new technique, and as expected with these projects, mistakes are often made, which is what brings us upon development and progressing onto mastering and perfecting the technique.
The next stage began around 1831 and saw the creation of the phenakistoscope, a machine built by two scientist named (Dr) Joseph Antoine Plateau and (Dr) Simon Rittrer. The significance of this machine was that it was able to produce an illusion of movement, that was visible on a rotating disk. Showing the movements of a number of images chronologically ordered when moved at a certain speed. When the speed of the movements and the rotating disks matched, it created an animation effect.
Here is an image of the phenakistoscope, and how it looks once turned
This was a massive step at the time as the vision of animation was no longer just an idea, a report, but has been progressed to create a working model that proves that it can work. This step is the most important, as it is often this step that determines the significance and purpose of the project, and the value it will place in human society.
Despite this huge step, it was still not the end for the progression of Animation as in 1889 Thomas Edison revealed his creation of the Kinetoscope, which was a machine that was able to project film that was 50ft in length for around 13 seconds that was seen through a peephole by one individual at a time. It introduced the technology and steps needed to create the illusion of movement. How this was done with the Kinetoscope was that a strip of film that contained a sequence of chronological images was placed over a light that had a fast shutter, and thus played an illusion that would soon be the standard for playing all cinematic projection.
This is a Kenetoscope
During the same year George Eastman started the manufacture of what is known as photographic film strips, he did this using a nitrocellulose film base. By doing this he helped introduce the importance of photography into the world, and popularized it making it become mainstream and well known by the variety of the population.
Now what was left was to view these projections and films to the population, to start using these techniques, this was done quite a while after in 1892 when a man named Emile Renynaud opened up a Theatre named Theatre Optique that was a place where people could view these images.
This was still not enough, as motion picture was still just shortly introduced and was seen as a phenomenon and something revolutionary to many that there were still developments that people saw and wanted to commit to. This saw the invention of the Cinematograph in 1892 that was able to project these moving images, this was made by a (French) inventer known as Leon Bouly. As we still see today, Bouly had the trouble of not being able to develop his ideas the right way due to a lack of money. To solve this issue Bouly sold the rights to the cinematograph to the Lumiere Brothers (the first filmmakers in history) in 1895.
This is a Cinemetograph.
As the cinemetograph was made all that was needed was to fuffill its purpose by creating films for it to project. The first film made was screened in 1895 known as Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon (the original French name being: La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon). It was a 46 second movie played at the speed of 16 frames per second with a total of 800 frames.
Shortly after in 1896 the Vitascope (Designed by Thomas Armat) was invented which was a machine that used light to project films (mostly of films made by Thomas Edison). The Vitascope would produce up to fifty frames per second, profucing up to 3000 negatives per minute. This product was a massive development from the Kinetoscope, however because of that the company of the product were quick to understand that the product would soon be an item of the past as it is no longer needed
One of the films it was known to show was 'Song of the Flame' which was a musical famously known to be photographed fully in technicolor and was the first to feature in a widescreen sequence.
Now that the opportunity has risen to make animations, it was the start of a new technique, of a new interest and specialty and because of that many people wanted to give it a try as it was still fresh and open for many modifications and styles. One of the more popular animations that came out was in 1906 by J . Stuart Blackton called "Humorous phases of funny faces'.
This was a silent cartoon generally known as one of the first standard picture films mioving at 20 frames per second. His method consisted of drawing comical faces on a blackboard in a chronological order and then later filming it. The advantages of using a blackboard was that when drawing another face he would just simply erase it and then redraw another face, the background being black allowed him to not worry about the movement of the background and having it sync with the characters.
This is segment of the silent cartoon.
Shortly after in 1908 another groundbreaking film was released named Fantasmagorie, a french animation that is highly regarded as the first animated cartoon. It was produced by Emile Cohl and what made it so highly known was that it was the first animation to draw each frame on paper. Using the traditional styles of hand drawn animation. What gave the paper the illusion of resembling a blackboard was that it was filmed onto negative film. The film consisted of 700 drawings, giving it a time frame of two minutes. Some may say that he was inspired and forwarded the chalk line effect from J. Stuart Blackton.
This is a segment of the animation
This still wasn't the end of Emile Cohl's animation, as in 1910 'En Route' was released, the first paper cutout animation and why this was significant is that it introduced a less time consuming technique by not having to constantly redraw each frame but to simply change the positioning of the paper. The film was Cohls way of commenting on society at the time and his views on how the increasing amount of traffic by the production of transport will eventually lead to nothing but disaster to mankind. The film was a huge improvement and reflected upon the developments on animation as it lasted for five whole minutes.
This is a segment of the animation
Another well known animator is Winsor McCay who is known for his animation 'Little Nemo' that was produced in 1911. a comic strip which told the story of a boy named Nemo that would dream of amazing adventures and stories, the comic strip is well known and highlights praised for its experimentation with colour and the format of illustration in panels. The panel always ended with Nemo waking up from his dreams.
One of the panels in 'Little Nemo'
He also produced an animation known as Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914 which was the first animated film to feature a dinosaur as the main character and consisted of 10,000 frames. It features a variety of different and new animation techniques including registration marks to reduce jittering in the animation, tracing paper, and key frames that decide both the start and ending points to create a smooth transition. This higlighy influenced and changed the way animators would approach animation.
Gertie the Dinosaur
In 1926 the first full length animated film was released in Argenitina called El Apostol which specialized in using cutout animation. The film was produced bu Alfonso De Laferrere and had a total of 58,000 frames that had 14 frames per second that resulted in a time frame of about 70 minutes. This is a massive development. Unfortunately the only known copy of the film was destroyed in a fire which resulted in the movie being known as a lost film.
Design of Irigoyen of El Apostol
In 1923 it was the year that the Walt Disney Company was founded by two men named Walt and Roy Disney and was at the tame named Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio and quickly dominated and lead the way for the future of the American animation industry.
It first started with the production "Alice In Wonderland" The style of this film was influenced by a technique that combined live action characters with cartoon characters that was originally done by Max Fleischer. Disney Brothers simply further developed this technique to create their resulting style in the film.
A part of the film"Alice In Wonderland"in 1923
Shortly after in 1928 Disney Brothers Studio released "Steam Boat Willy", what made this significant is that it was among the first to combine film production with synchronized sound. It is known as the debut of the much loved character Mickey Mouse. the mascot of Disney. It did not only have Synchronized sound,but also a soundtrack which resulted in it being the most popular cartoon at the time.
Micky Mouse in "Steam Boat Willy"
In 1930 the first animation to be created with a two strip technicolor produced by Walter Lantz named "The King Of Jazz"At the time the dyes available were only red and green (with dashes of other colors mixed in) but no blue dyes, however the green dye luckily would appear as cyan under certain conditions. Therefore to aspire to produce a Technicolor animation a lot of skill and precision would be needed to maintain control over these situation to gain the result wanted. Materials such as filters would be used to manipulate the colours hue, saturation and brightness.
A poster of "The King Of Jazz"
In 1934 a man named Urb Irwek creates a multi plane camera. This is a camera that is often used as a part of traditional animation processes, as it is able to film separate layers at various speeds to create a three dimensional effect whilst still maintaining the illusion of depth. One of the features it works on is that the further away the camera is from the frame, the slower the speed of the frame. This is known as the parallax process. There is also the technique of having the foreground in an opposite direction to the background to create a rotating effect in the frame.
A multi plane camera
Later in 1957 John Whitney was working to create analog computer graphics using the mechanism of a World War two M-5 gun to do this. In 1961 he again used different gear mechanisms to create film sequences.
In 1964 we saw this being extended by Ken Knowlton who started working on developments for computer techniques for producing movies. H developed the programme known as BEFLIX which was a programming language for bitmap computer produced movies.
A computer technique for the production of Animated movies.
In 1982 we saw the movie known as Tron being made with CGI premise produced by Walt Disney Productions, the movie was influenced by a video game of pong. The movie was intended to first be an animated film, also having a 30 second animation as a trial of the main character. However later on it was decided to be a live action movie with the back light of computer animation.
Tron 1982 poster
Another movie known popularly known to be among the firt to use CGI is "The Last Starfighter" which was produced in 1984 and was dircted by Nick Castle. In this film the CGI was used in place of the models of star ships and to depict both the environment and the battle scenes. It among the first films to use CGI in place of real life object rather then digital.graphics.
"The last Starfighter" poster
In 1993 CGI made a massive development and this devlpment was shown in the movie known as "Jurassic Park" which used its CG to depict realistic (living) creatures. The dinosaurs were created by using a life sized animatronic (a robotic device) dinosaur aided by the visual effects of the company industrial light and magic.
A part of the movie showing the detail of the CGI
Two years later in 1995 we once again were able to experiance a massive development in CGI being in the film known as "Toy Story" a full length 3D CGI film produced by Pixer.
"Toy Story" film poster in 1995
These were the key highlights of the history and developments of Animation, what this shows is not only the power of a society's desire to exceed and develop, but also the power of one single idea and the power it has to change the course and concepts of mankind.
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