MDA 1909: Early Animation

History of Animation

(useful chronology: http://joshuamosley.com/UPenn/courses/Ani/AnimationHistory.html)

 

Definition:

(Merriam-Webster) Etymology: Middle English, from Latin animatus, past participle of animate to give life to, from anima breath, soul; akin to Old English ōthian to breathe, Latin animus spirit, Greek anemos wind, Sanskrit aniti he breathes.

(Chambers) liveliness; vivacity. 2 a the techniques used to record still drawings on film in such a way as to make the images seem to move; b any sequence of these images.

Animated Cartoon: (Merriam-Webster): a motion picture that is made from a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of inanimate objects (as puppets) and that simulates movement by slight progressive changes in each frame

 

Early Static depictions

From the earliest times, people have been trying to graphically depict movement.

• 32,000 year old cave paintings:
  
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave
    
• Iranian 5,200 year old Bowl:
  
  • http://www.animationmagazine.net/article/8045
    
• Eygypt:4,000 year old
  
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Egyptmotionseries.jpg
    

 

Early dynamic depictions

Optical Toys that relied on Persistence of Vision (A Myth –debunked in early psychology)

(Depicting images at greater than about 16 fps [10fps still works but is very flickery])

• Zoetrope: 180 AD by the inventor Ting Huan (And later, William George Horner 1830's)
  
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYMNHrUlC5s&feature=related
    
• Thaumatrope (Victrorian)
  
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UVbL-sDGFA&NR=1
    
• phenakistoscope (Joseph Plateau and Simon von Stampfer)
  
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAoa0mv2id4&feature=related
    
• Flip book: John Barnes Linnet
  

(First to use a linear rather than circular sequence of images)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barnes_Linnett
  

• Mechanised flipBook: Electrotachyscope
  
  • ('What the butler saw' machine)
    
• Eadweard Muybridge
  
  • Photographed sequences of human and animal motion using multile cameras.
    
  • Animated example:
    
  • http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xVc68ucgT2o&feature=related
    
  • Devised the zoopraxiscope (Early projection system)
    

 

Early animated movies

• First on film
  The Enchanted Drawing - James Stuart Blackton, 1900
  
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay-85YqEV-s
    
  • (Better, blackboard drawn: "Humorous phases of funny faces." 1908)
    
• Emile Cohl - Fantasmagorie 1908
  
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEAObel8yIE
    
• Winsor McCay
  
  • Gertie
    
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY40DHs9vc4
    
  • Sinking of the Lusitania
    
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN-KdPBhyjc
    
• Max Fleischer (Rotoscoping)
  
  • (Out of the Inkwell)
    
  • http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8705150218304827472#
    
• Felix the Cat in Hollywood (1923)
  
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ-i9bE7RV4
    
• Emile Cohl - The Hasher's Delirium (1910)
  
• Quirino Cristiani - el apóstol - First Feature Length Animation (1917)
  
• Segundo de Chomon - El hotel electric
  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZFdaqQky2o

• Ladislaw Starewicz - Cameraman's Revenge (Stop Motion 1912)
  
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIC0Sb6pLvI
    
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPmLi3zYaE8
    
• Steam Boat Willy (early use of sound:1928)
  
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBgghnQF6E4