UNIT 3: Animation
The History of Animation
The phenakistoscope was an early animation device. It was invented in 1831 simultaneously by the Belgian Joseph Plateau and the Austrian Simon von Stampfer. 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 is spun, a viewer would look through the slots at the reflection of the drawings which would only become visible when a slot passes by the viewer's eye.vThis created the illusion of animation.
The first flip book was patented in 1868 by John Barnes Linnett as the kineograph. A flip book is just a book with particularly springy pages that have an animated series of images printed near the unbound edge. A viewer bends the pages back and then rapidly releases them one at a time so that each image viewed springs out of view to momentarily reveal the next image just before it does the same. They operate on the same principle as the phenakistoscope and the zoetrope what with the rapid replacement of images with others, but they create the illusion without any thing serving as a flickering shutter as the slits had in the previous devices. They accomplish this because of the simple physiological fact that the eye can focus more easily on stationary objects than on moving ones. Flip books were more often cited as inspiration by early animated filmmakers than the previously discussed devices which didn't reach quite as wide of an audience. In previous animation devices the images were drawn in circles which meant diameter of the circles physically limited just how many images could reasonably be displayed. While the book format still brings about something of a physical limit to the length of the animation, this limit is significantly longer than the round devices. Even this limit was able to be broken with the invention of the mutoscope in 1894. It consisted of a long circularly bound flip book in a box with a crank handle to flip through the pages.
James Stuart Blackton (January 5, 1875 – August 13, 1941) was an American film producer, most notable for making the first silent film that included animated sequences recorded on standard motion picture film – The Enchanted Drawing (1900) – and is because of that considered the father of American animation. Both stop-motion and drawn animation techniques were used in his films. He was also director of the Silent Era, the founder of Vitagraph Studios.
The transition to stop-motion was apparently accidental and occurred around 1905. According to Albert Smith, one day the crew was filming a complex series of stop-action effects on the roof while steam from the building's generator was billowing in the background. On playing the film back, Smith noticed the odd effect created by the steam puffs scooting across the screen and decided to reproduce it deliberately. A few films, some lost, use this effect to represent invisible ghosts or to have toys come to life. In 1906, Blackton directed Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, which uses stop-motion as well as stick puppetry to produce a series of effects. After Blackton's hand draws two faces on a chalkboard, they appear to come to life and engage in antics. Most of the film uses life action effects instead of animation, but nevertheless this film had a huge effect in stimulating the creation of animated films in America. In Europe, the same effect was had from "The Haunted Hotel" (1907), another Vitagraph short directed by Blackton. The "Haunted Hotel" was mostly live-action, about a tourist spending the night in an inn run by invisible spirits. Most of the effects are also live-action (wires and such), but one scene of a dinner making itself was done using stop-motion, and was presented in a tight close-up that allowed budding animators to study it for technique.
The transition to stop-motion was apparently accidental and occurred around 1905. According to Albert Smith, one day the crew was filming a complex series of stop-action effects on the roof while steam from the building's generator was billowing in the background. On playing the film back, Smith noticed the odd effect created by the steam puffs scooting across the screen and decided to reproduce it deliberately. A few films, some lost, use this effect to represent invisible ghosts or to have toys come to life. In 1906, Blackton directed Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, which uses stop-motion as well as stick puppetry to produce a series of effects. After Blackton's hand draws two faces on a chalkboard, they appear to come to life and engage in antics. Most of the film uses life action effects instead of animation, but nevertheless this film had a huge effect in stimulating the creation of animated films in America. In Europe, the same effect was had from "The Haunted Hotel" (1907), another Vitagraph short directed by Blackton. The "Haunted Hotel" was mostly live-action, about a tourist spending the night in an inn run by invisible spirits. Most of the effects are also live-action (wires and such), but one scene of a dinner making itself was done using stop-motion, and was presented in a tight close-up that allowed budding animators to study it for technique.
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FIRSTS IN ANIMATIONS
Year | Milestone | Film | Notes | |
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1917 | Feature film | El Apóstol | Created with cutout animation; now considered lost | |
1926 | The Adventures of Prince Achmed | Oldest surviving animated feature film | ||
1924 | Synchronized sound on film | Oh Mabel | Short film; used Lee DeForest's Phonofilm sound on film process, though none of the characters "speak" on screen | |
1926 | Synchronized sound on film with animated dialogue | My Old Kentucky Home[28] | Short film; used Lee DeForest's Phonofilm sound on film process; a dog character mouths the words, "Follow the ball, and join in, everybody!" | |
1930 | Filmed in Two-color Technicolor | King of Jazz[29] | Premiering in April 1930, a three-minute cartoon sequence produced by Walter Lantz appears in this full-length, live-action Technicolor feature film. | |
1930 | Two-color Technicolor in a stand-alone cartoon | Fiddlesticks | Released in August 1930, this Ub Iwerks-produced short is the first standalone color cartoon. Walter Lantz previously produced a Technicolor cartoon sequence that was used as part of an otherwise live-action feature film. | |
1931 | Feature-length sound film | Peludópolis | ||
1932 | Filmed in three-strip Technicolor | Flowers and Trees | Short film | |
1935 | Feature length puppet animated (stop-motion) film | The New Gulliver | ||
1937 | Feature filmed in three-strip Technicolor | Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs | ||
1940 | Stereophonic sound | Fantasia | ||
1949 | Television series | Crusader Rabbit | ||
1955 | Feature filmed in widescreen format | Lady and the Tramp | ||
1961 | Feature film using xerography process (replacing hand inking) | One Hundred and One Dalmatians | ||
1983 | 3D feature film - stereoscopic technique | Abra Cadabra | ||
Animated feature containing computer-generated imagery | Rock and Rule | |||
1985 | Feature length clay-animated film | The Adventures of Mark Twain | ||
1988 | cinematography milestone | "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" | First feature film to have live-action and cartoon animation share the screen for the entire film | |
1990 | Produced without camera | The Rescuers Down Under | First feature film completely produced with Disney's Computer Animation Production System | |
1995 | Fully computer-animated feature film | Toy Story | ||
2003 | First Flash-animated film | Wizards and Giants | ||
2004 | Cel-shaded animation | Appleseed and Steamboy | ||
2005 | Feature shot with digital still cameras | Corpse Bride | ||
2007 | Feature digitally animated by one person | Flatland | ||
2009 | Stop-motion character animated using rapid prototyping | Coraline | ||
2010 | Animated feature film to earn more than $1,000,000,000 worldwide
Feature film released theatrically in 7.1 surround sound |
Toy Story 3 |