Essay Research - History

A Brief History of Animation

Pre-film

c. 1650, Magic Lantern. Christian Huygens, Athanasius Kircher: A simple device that used an oil lamp or candle to project a translucent painting through a lens onto any wall or flat surface.

c. 1824, Thaumatrope. Sir John Herschel: A disc of card with different pictures on each side that make up a whole image when spun rapidly. The illusion demonstrates persistence of vision.

1831, Phenakistoscope. Joseph Plateau and Simon von Stampher (simultaneously): a disc with radial slots at equal distance around the circumference and an image sequence printed in between the slots. The viewer observes the animation in a mirror by looking through the slots as the disc spins.

1834, Zoetrope. William George Horner: The device works in the same way as the phenakistoscope but rather than being a disc it is a cylinder with vertical slots in its side. The animations are printed on cards that can be placed inside the cylinder and viewed through the slots as the zoetrope is rotated.

1868, Flip Books. John Barnes Linnett: a book that has a series of images printed on the same side of sequential pages which, when flipped through provides the illusion of animation. Works on the same principle as the zoetrope and phenakistoscope.

1877, Praxinoscope, Charles-Emile Reynaud: Similar to the zoetrope in that it uses a strip of images placed on the inner surface of a spinning cylinder but instead of viewing the animation through narrow slits an inner ring of mirrors was used to capture the reflection of each passing image.

Silent Era:

1899, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper: "Matches an Appeal" - stop motion animation believed to be the oldest existing animated film.

1906, J. Stuart Blackton: "Humerous Phases of Funny Faces" considered the first example of traditional animation using film.

1907?, Unknown: "Katsudo Shashin". Earliest Japanese anime. Found in 2005 it is 50 frames long and shows a young boy writing "katsudo shashin", Japanese for moving pictures.

1908, Emile Cohl: "Fantasmagorie" considered the first example of what we think of as a cartoon, character based narrative.

1910, Ladislaw Starewicz: "Beautiful Lukanida" pioneer of puppet animation. The PP demonstrates his work using his 1912 animation "The Cameraman's Revenge".

1914, Winsor McCay: "Gertie the Dinosaur". An early example of character animation and the first film to combine live action and animated footage.

1917, Quirino Cristiani: "El Apostol". This was the first animated feature film, made using cutout animation it was 70 minutes long. (no copies survive)

1921, Walter Ruttmann: "Lichtspiel Opus I". Ruttmann was a pioneer of abstract animation and part of a movement known as Absolute Film along with Hans Richter, Oskar Fischinger and Viking Eggeling.

Golden age:

1923 - 1927, Walt Disney: "Alice Comedies". Walt Disneys first project - Originally produced by Laugh-o-Grams, Disneys first animation company, but distributed by Disney asfter Laugh-o-Grams went bankrupt.

1924 - 1927, Max and Dave Fleischer: "Song Car-Tunes". Pioneering in synchronized sound with animation, "Oh Mabel" was produced, alongside 3 other songs, as animations using Phonofilm in 1924 and are the first animations to have synchronized sound.

1928, Disney: "Steamboat Willie". Disneys first animation with synchronized sound, more theatres had projectors and speakers for Phonofilm by this point in time so it had more of an impact than the Fleischer Car-Tunes.

1931, Quirino Cristiani: "Peludopolis".  The first feature length animation to use synchronized sound. No copies survive but a short scene was reconstructed in 1983.

1932, Disney: "Flowers and Trees". The first animation to use three colour Technicolor method. Disney won the first academy award for best animated short film with this film.

1935, Tex Avery: "Gold diggers of '49". Fred "Tex" Avery's first animation for Warner Brothers.

1937, Disney: "Snow White & the Seven Dwarves". Although commonly believed to be the first animated feature film, it is not. El Apostol beat snow white by 20 years and there were at least 7 other animated features in between. Snow White was the first feature animation to be made using three strip Technicolor and the first to become successful within the English speaking world.

1945, Mitsuyo Seo: "Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors". Japans first feature length anime, made on order from the Japanese Naval Ministry as propaganda to support the war.