History of animation

Part 1 The Optical Illusion era 1824 - 1868

1824 John Ayrton Paris

John A Paris invented the Thaumatrop, a small disc with pictures put on the two sided disk, when the pieces of string used to spin it were used, the Thaumatrop would trick the human eye perceiving it as a moving image. This is and example of early 2 frame animation, by using only how the human eye perceives speed of an object. This led to similar animation devices such as the Phenakistoscope that had a series of images painted on the front and when spun it would make it look like the series of images were moving.

1834 William Horner

William Horner invented the Zoetrope a device that worked similarly to the Thaumatrop however it was shaped like a wheel, inside the wheel it contained a series of images which when turned would make the pictures look like they were moving using the same optical illusion style used by the Thaumtrop and the Phenakistoscope.


1868 John Barnes Linnett

Was the inventor of the flip book animation in which a image was a drawn on each page of paper, When the paper is flipped quickly enough from first to last page. You could also find flip book animation in kinescopes for some of the public to view. the images on each page of paper would move so fast it would look like the images were moving. You could say this is the beginning of early cel animation as each page consisted of a frame and was completely hand drawn. This would then later lead to modern cel animation with the invention of early picture film and would lead to massive companies such as Disney and Toei animation being founded.

Part 2 The Birth of Animation Media and Techniques 1906 to 1933

1906, Stuart Blackton, 












In 1906  Stuart Blankton created a short film known as the Humorous Phases of Fun a animated cel film which was created using Camera film. Each scene's frame was hand drawn on a blackboard. The film showed many different sketches most notably a clown playing with a hat and a dog jumping through a hoop. This kind of animation style is called traditional or cel where a object is drawn by hand, frame by frame so when all the frames are brought together it create a animated set of images.


1908 Emile Cohl












Two years later another film was created called Fantasmagorie made by Emile Cohll, came out which is similar to Stuart Blanktons work. The film was a traditional cel animation where each frame was drawn onto paper and then each piece of paper had a photographic still taken with negative film. Using negative film it gave the animated film the look of being made on a blackboard even thought each frame was done on paper.

Max Fleischer 1915

In 1915 Max Fleischer created the technique known as rotoscope in a small series called out of the inkwell. Max got his brother to dress a clown and then draw over the filmed footage film inventing the  rotoscope. technique. The film also included some stop motion

1923 Walt Disney 

In 1923 Walt Disney left Laugh O Grams studios due to it losing all funds and going bankrupt. So Walt Disney went to Los Angles and went on to form Disney in which he went onto create such animations such as Steamboat Willie in 1928 which ended the silent film era by including sound into animation for the first time. Disney then went onto making large amounts of cel animated movies such as Snow White, Cinderella and  Aladdin. Today it is still known today for it's traditional animation style and being the founding father of major animation companies.

In 1932 Disney made the first fully coloured animated short called Flowers and Trees a began the rea of coloured cel animation.

1933 Merian C Cooper

In 1933 Merian C Cooper directed the first film to combine animation and real time footage to create a film called King Kong. instead of using cel animation with the footage he used something different known as stop motion animation. Stop motion animation is where a model is moved slightly then a photo is taken and then rinsed and repeated till editing where all the frames are brought together to animate a moving model.

Part 3 Modern Day Animation


1973 Michael Crinchton 












In 1973 Michael Crinchton created the film Westworld with in this film it included some of the first Computer generated image use ever created for some brief scenes where the scenes are pixelized to portray cyborg vision. This was done using very early computer software which created the pixelisation effect.

1993 Steven Spielberg









In 1993 Steven Spielberg made the film Jurassic Park the film included completely photo realistic computer generated image animations of dinosaur's put into into live action film footage. The animations were made using a software called power animator which the animation crew created the dinosaurs into the film.

Summary
In conclusion animation has come a long way from optical illusions in the 1800s, to computer generated image animation in modern day. Today we have software that can be freely acquired from the public such as Adobe Flash, After effects, Source Film Maker and Sony Vegas when doing stop motion animation, because of this has given birth to such great Youtube animators such as Egoraptor, Psychic Pebbles Harry Partridge, and the late Edd Gould.