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Persistence of vision was discovered in the early 1800 's. Our eye and brain retain a visual impression for about 1 / 30 th of a second. Persistence of vision prevents us from noticing that a motion picture screen is dark about half the time, and that a television image is just one bright, fast, discrete dot sweeping the screen. Motion pictures show one new frame (still picture of the movie clip) every 1 / 24 th of a second and the same frame is shown three times during this time period (Persistence, 2001). The eye retains the image of each frame long enough, giving an illusion of smooth, continuous motion. Animation uses exactly the same principle to render the idea of motion.
This led to such devices as the zoe trope, or 'wheel of life. ' The zoe trope has a short, fat cylinder, which rotated on its axis of symmetry. Around the inside of the cylinder was a sequence of drawings, each one slightly different from the one next to it. The cylinder had long slits cut into its side in between each of the images so that when the cylinder was spun a slit would allow the eye to see the image on the oppose wall of the cylinder. As the cylinder was spun on its axis, the sequence of slits passing in front of the eye would present a sequence of images to the eye, creating the illusion of motion. Another low-tech animation piece of equipment was the flipbook.
The flipbook was a tablet of paper with an individual drawing on each page so the viewer could flip through them. This was also popular in the 1800 s. However, these devices were little more than parlor curiosities used for light entertainment. While studying the early days of conventional animation is interesting in itself, the purpose for presenting an overview here is to gain an appreciation of the technological advances, which drove the progress of animation in the beginning.
The earliest hint of using a camera to make lifeless things appear to move was by Miles in 1890 using simple tricks. The earliest pioneers in film animation were Emile Could, a Frenchman who produced several vignettes, J. Stuart lawton, an American, who actually animated 'smoke' in a scene in 1900 and who is credited with the first animated cartoon in 1906, and the first celebrated animator, Winsor Mc Cay, an American best known for his works Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur. Winsor Mc Cay is considered by many to have produced the first popular 'animation'. Like many of the early animators, he was an accomplished newspaper cartoonist. He redrew each complete image on rice paper mounted on cardboard.
He was also the first to experiment with color in animation. Much of his early work was incorporated into vaudeville acts in which he would 'interact' with the animated character on the screen. Similarly, early cartoons often incorporated live action with animated characters. When considering such a popular entertainment format, in order to appreciate the audience reaction the reader should keep in mind the relative naivet'e of the viewers at that time; they had no idea how film worked much less what hand- drawn animation was. It was, indeed, magic.
The first major technical developments in the animation process can be traced to the work (and patents) of John Bray starting in 1910. His work laid the groundwork for the use of translucent cells (short for celluloid) in compositing multiple layers of drawings into a final image as well as the use of grey scale (as opposed to black and white) drawings. Later developments by Bray and others enhanced the overlay dea to include multiple translucent pieces of celluloid (cels), added a peg system for registration, and the drawing of the background on long sheets of paper so that panning (translating the camera parallel to the plane of the background) could be performed more easily. Out of Bray's studio came the likes of Max Fleischer (Betty Boop), Paul Terry (Terrytoons), George Stallings (? ), and Walter Lantz (Woody Woodpecker). Fleischer patented roto scoping in 1915. Rotoscoping is drawing images on cells by tracing over previously recorded live action.
Bray experimented with color in one 1920 short. During this time, animation as an art form was still struggling. The first animated character with an dentifiable personality is Felix the Cat by Otto Messmer which appeared in the early 1920 s in Pat Sullivan productions. In the late 1920 s however, new forces had to be reckoned with: sound and Walt Disney. forerunner of today's comic strip can be found in an Egyptian wall decoration circa 2000 B. C.
In successive panels it depicts the actions of two wrestlers in a variety of holds. In one of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous illustrations, he shows how the limbs would look in various positions. Giotto's angels seem to take flight in their repetitive motions. The Japanese used scrolls to tell continuous stories. Since the beginnings of time, human beings have tried to capture a sense of motion in their art.
From the eight- legged boar in the Altamira caves of Northern Spain to paintings alongside the remains of long-dead pharoah's, this quest for capturing motion has been a common theme throughout many of mankind's artistic endeavors. True animation cannot be achieved without first understanding a fundamental principle of the human eye: the persistence of vision. This was first demonstrated in 1828 by Frenchman, aul Roget, who invented the thaumatrope, It was a disc with a string or peg attached to both sides. One side of the disc showed a bird, the other an empty cage.
When the disc was twirled, the bird appeared in the cage. This proved that the eye retains images when it is exposed to a series of pictures, one at a time. Two other inventions helped to further the cause of animation. The phenakistoscope, invented by Joseph Plateau in 1826, was a circular card with slits around the edge. The viewer held the card up to a mirror and peered through the slits as the card whirled.
Through a series of drawings around the circumference of the card, the viewer saw a progression of images resulting in a moving object. The same technique applied to the zeo trope. In 1860, Pierre Designed, inserted a strip of paper containing drawings on the inside of a drumline cylinder. The drum twirled on a spindle, and the viewer gazed through slots to the top of the drum. The figures on the inside magically came to life, endlessly looping in an acrobatic feat. The development of the motion camera and projector by Thomas A.
Edison and others provided the first real practical means of making animation. Even still, the animation was done in the simplest of means. Stuart Blackton, issued a short film in 1906 entitled Humourous Phases of Funny Faces where he drew comical faces on a blackboard, photographed them, and the erased it to draw another stage of the facial expression. This 'stop-motion' effect astonished audiences by making drawings comes to life. In the early twenties, the popularity of the animated cartoon was on the decline, and movie exhibitors were looking elsewhere for alternative entertainment media. The public was tired of the old formula of stringing sight gags together without including a story line or any character development.
What the art of animation could accomplish was not yet evident in this period, except for in the works of Winsor Mc Cay such as Gertie the Dinosaur, 1914. Mccay's major accomplishment was the fact that he had developed a character in his dinosaur, something that had previously only been seen in Otto Messmer's, Felix the Cat. Mc Cay's piece had a galvanizing effect on audiences. The notion of a dinosaur coming to life on the screen was astonishing. Of all the early animations, Felix the Cat developed the strongest screen personality, but failed to develop any further, relying on crude visual tricks to entertain the audience as opposed to developing a stronger screen persona. At this time, many of the animations were based on primitive gags and violence, which is still true of cartoons today.
One character would beat another mercilessly, only to have his victim instantly recover and return the favor. Perhaps the hero would swing his sword and reduce the villain to baloney slices, only to have him reappear as if magically rejoined. A big change came over the industry in the mid twenties: commercialization. Big studios took over the smaller cottage industries and set standards for animation. Animators were given quotas on the number of drawings they had to produce a day...
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