History of animation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and the illusion of change[Note 1] by means of
the rapid display of a sequence of images that minimally differ from each other.
Humans have probably attempted to depict motion as far back as the paleolithic period. While there
were several predecessors, the 17th century invention of the magic lantern provided the first
apparatus with which convincing moving images have been created. However, the movement of
these images were the result of moving parts rather than a rapid succession of sequential images.
The introduction of the phenakistiscope in 1833 marks the start of true animation, although it could
only show loops of a limited number of "frames".

Contents
[hide]

1Early approaches to motion in art

2The Magic Lantern
3Animation before film
o 3.1Thaumatrope (1824)
o 3.2Phenakistoscope (1831)
o 3.3Zoetrope (1834)
o 3.4Flip book (1868)
o 3.5Praxinoscope (1877)
4Traditional animation
o 4.1The silent era
o 4.2Walt Disney & Warner Bros.
o 4.3Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
o 4.4The television era
5Animation Techniques
o 5.1Stop motion
o 5.2CGI animation
6Firsts in animation
7Asia
o 7.1History of Chinese animation
o 7.2History of Indian animation
o 7.3History of Iranian animation
o 7.4History of Japanese animation (Anime)
8Europe
o 8.1History of British animation
o 8.2History of Czech animation
o 8.3History of Estonian animation
o 8.4History of French animation
o 8.5History of Hungarian animation
o 8.6History of Italian animation
o 8.7History of Russian animation
o 8.8History of animation in Croatia (in former Yugoslavia)
9Oceania
o 9.1History of Australian Animation
o 9.2History of New Zealand animation
 10Americas
o 10.1History of Argentinian animation
o 10.2History of Brazilian animation
o 10.3History of Canadian animation
o 10.4History of Cuban animation
o 10.5History of Mexican animation
o 10.6History of United States animation
11Media
12Notes
13References
o 13.1Works cited
13.1.1Bibliography
13.1.2Online
14External links

Early approaches to motion in art[edit]

Early examples of attempts to capture the phenomenon of motion into a drawing can be found
in paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are often depicted with multiple legs in superimposed
positions.[1] It has been claimed that the flickering light of flames can induce an illusion of motion in
these paintings.[2]
There are some early examples of sequential images that may seem similar to series of animation
drawings, but it's very unlikely that there were any contemporary means to display them in a way
that would produce the illusion of motion. Most of these examples only allow an extremely low frame
rate when they are animated by modern means, resulting in crude animations that are not very
lifelike. Nonetheless, the practice of sequential art may have provided some foundation for the
development of the art of animation.

Sequence of images that minimally differ from each other - from the site of the Burnt City in Iran, late half of 3rd
millennium B.C.

One early example is a 5,200-year old pottery bowl discovered in Shahr-e Sukhteh, Iran. The bowl
has five sequential images painted around it that seem to show phases of a goat leaping up to nip at
a tree.[3][4]
An Egyptian burial chamber mural, approximately 4000 years old, showing wrestlers in action.

An Egyptian mural approximately 4000 years old, found in the tomb of Khnumhotep at the Beni
Hassan cemetery, features a very long series of images that apparently depict the sequence of
events in a wrestling match.[5]
Seven drawings by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1510) extending over two folios in the Windsor
Collection, Anatomical Studies of the Muscles of the Neck, Shoulder, Chest, and Arm, have detailed
renderings of the upper body and less-detailed facial features. The sequence shows multiple angles
of the figure as it rotates and the arm extends. Because the drawings show only small changes from
one image to the next, together they imply the movement of a single figure.
Ancient Chinese records contain several mentions of devices, including one made by the
inventor Ding Huan, that were said to "give an impression of movement" to a series of human or
animal figures on them,[6] but these accounts are unclear and may only refer to the actual movement
of the figures through space.[7]
Since before 1000 CE the Chinese had a rotating lantern which had silhouettes projected on its thin
paper sides that appeared to chase each other. This was called the "trotting horse lamp" [] as
it would typically depict horses and horse-riders. The cut-out silhouettes were attached inside the
lantern to a shaft with a paper vane impeller on top, rotated by heated air rising from a lamp. Some
versions added extra motion with jointed heads, feet or hands of figures triggered by a transversely
connected iron wire.[8]
These and other occurrences of moving images, like for instance shadow play with jointed puppets
or moving parts in book illustrations, are not considered true animation. Technically they lack the
rapid display of sequential images and the results are usually not very lifelike.

The Magic Lantern[edit]

Main article: Magic lantern

Christiaan Huygens' 1659 sketches for a projection of Death taking off his head
Slide with a fantoccini trapeze artist and a chromatrope border design (circa 1880)

Moving images were possibly projected with the magic lantern immediately since its invention by
Christiaan Huygens in 1659. His sketches for magic lantern slides have been dated to that year and
are the oldest known document concerning the magic lantern.[9] One encircled sketch depicts Death
raising his arm from his toes to his head, another shows him moving his right arm up and down from
his elbow and yet another taking his skull off his neck and placing it back. Dotted lines indicate the
intended movements.
Techniques to add motion to painted glass slides for the magic lantern were described since circa
1700. These usually involved parts (for instance limbs) painted on one or more extra pieces of glass
moved by hand or small mechanisms across a stationary slide which showed the rest of the
picture.[10] Popular subjects for mechanical slides included the sails of a windmill turning, a
procession of figures, a drinking man lowering and raising his glass to his mouth, a head with
moving eyes, a nose growing very long, rats jumping in the mouth of a sleeping man. A more
complex 19th century rackwork slide showed the then known eight planets and their satellites
orbiting around the sun.[11] Two layers of painted waves on glass could create a convincing illusion of
a calm sea turning into a very stormy sea tossing some boats about by increasing the speed of the
manipulation of the different parts.
In 1770 Edm-Gilles Guyot detailed how to project a magic lantern image on smoke to create a
transparent, shimmering image of a hovering ghost. This technique was used in
the phantasmagoria shows that became very popular in several parts of Europe between 1790 and
the 1830s. Other techniques were developed to produce convincing ghost experiences. The lantern
was handheld to move the projection across the screen (which was usually an almost invisible
transparent screen behind which the lanternist operated hidden in the dark). A ghost could seem to
approach the audience or grow larger by moving the lantern towards the screen, sometimes with the
lantern on a trolley on rails. Multiple lanterns made ghosts move independently and were
occasionally used for superimposition in the composition of complicated scenes.[12]
Dissolving views became a popular magic lantern show, especially in England in the 1830s and
1840s.[12] These typically had a landscape changing from a winter version to a spring or summer
variation by slowly diminishing the light from one version while introducing the aligned projection of
the other slide.[13] Another use showed the gradual change of for instance groves into cathedrals.[14]
Between the 1840s and 1870s several abstract magic lantern effects were developed. This included
the chromatrope which projected dazzling colorful geometrical patterns by rotating two painted glass
discs in opposite directions.[15]
Occasionally small shadow puppets had been used in phantasmagoria shows.[12] Magic lantern
slides with jointed figures set in motion by levers, thin rods, or cams and worm wheels were also
produced commercially and patented in 1891. A popular version of these "Fantoccini slides" had a
somersaulting monkey with arms attached to mechanism that made it tumble with dangling feet.
Fantoccini slides are named after the Italian word for puppets like marionettes or jumping jacks.[16]

Animation before film[edit]

Numerous devices that successfully displayed animated images were introduced well before the
advent of the motion picture. These devices were used to entertain, amaze, and sometimes even
frighten people. The majority of these devices didn't project their images, and accordingly could only
be viewed by a single person at any one time. For this reason they were considered toys rather than
devices for a large scale entertainment industry like later animation. Many of these devices are still
built by and for film students learning the basic principles of animation.
Thaumatrope (1824)[edit]
A thaumatrope is a simple toy that was popular in the 19th century. It is a small disk with different
pictures on each side, such as a bird and a cage, and is attached to two pieces of string.[17] When the
strings are twirled quickly between the fingers, the pictures appear to combine into a single image.
This demonstrates the persistence of vision, the fact that the perception of an object by the eyes and
brain continues for a small fraction of a second after the view is blocked or the object is removed.
The invention of the device is often credited to Sir John Herschel, but John Ayrton Paris popularized
it in 1824 when he demonstrated it to the Royal College of Physicians.[18]
Phenakistoscope (1831)[edit]

A phenakistoscope disc by Eadweard Muybridge (1893).

The phenakistoscope was an early animation device.[19] It was invented in 1831, simultaneously by
the Belgian Joseph Plateau and the Austrian Simon von Stampfer.[20] It consists of a disk with a
series of images, drawn on radii evenly spaced around the center of the disk. Slots are cut out of the
disk on the same radii as the drawings, but at a different distance from the center. The device would
be placed in front of a mirror and spun. As the phenakistoscope spins, a viewer looks through the
slots at the reflection of the drawings, are momentarily visible when a slot passes by the viewer's
eye.[21] This created the illusion of animation.
Zoetrope (1834)[edit]
The zoetrope concept was suggested in 1834 by William George Horner, and from the 1860s
marketed as the zoetrope. It operates on the same principle as the phenakistoscope. It was a
cylindrical spinning device with several frames of animation printed on a paper strip placed around
the interior circumference.[22] The observer looks through vertical slits around the sides to view the
moving images on the opposite side as the cylinder spins. As it spins, the material between the
viewing slits moves in the opposite direction of the images on the other side and in doing so serves
as a rudimentary shutter. The zoetrope had several advantages over the basic phenakistoscope. It
did not require the use of a mirror to view the illusion, and because of its cylindrical shape it could be
viewed by several people at once.[23]
In ancient China, people used a device that one 20th century historian categorized as "a variety of
zoetrope."[6] It had a series of translucent paper or mica panels and was operated by being hung
over a lamp so that vanes at the top would cause it to rotate as heated air rose from the lamp. It has
been claimed that this rotation, if it reached the ideal speed, caused the same illusion of animation
as the later zoetrope, but because there was no shutter (the slits in a zoetrope) or other provision for
intermittence, the effect was in fact simply a series of horizontally drifting figures, with no true
animation.[24][25][26]
Flip book (1868)[edit]

An 1886 illustration of the kineograph.

John Barnes Linnett patented the first flip book in 1868 as the kineograph.[27] A flip book is a small
book with relatively springy pages, each having one in a series of animation images located near its
unbound edge. The user bends all of the pages back, normally with the thumb, then by a gradual
motion of the hand allows them to spring free one at a time. As with the phenakistoscope, zoetrope
and praxinoscope, the illusion of motion is created by the apparent sudden replacement of each
image by the next in the series, but unlike those other inventions no view-interrupting shutter or
assembly of mirrors is required and no viewing device other than the user's hand is absolutely
necessary. Early film animators cited flip books as their inspiration more often than the earlier
devices, which did not reach as wide an audience.[28]
The older devices by their nature severely limit the number of images that can be included in a
sequence without making the device very large or the images impractically small. The book format
still imposes a physical limit, but many dozens of images of ample size can easily be
accommodated. Inventors stretched even that limit with the mutoscope, patented in 1894 and
sometimes still found in amusement arcades. It consists of a large circularly-bound flip book in a
housing, with a viewing lens and a crank handle that drives a mechanism that slowly rotates the
assembly of images past a catch, sized to match the running time of an entire reel of film.
Praxinoscope (1877)[edit]
The first known animated projection on a screen was created in France by Charles-mile Reynaud,
who was a French science teacher. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Thtre
Optique in December 1888.[29] On 28 October 1892, he projected the first animation in public, Pauvre
Pierrot, at the Muse Grvin in Paris.[29] This film is also notable as the first known instance of film
perforations being used. His films were not photographed, but drawn directly onto the transparent
strip. In 1900, more than 500,000 people attended these screenings.