A Very Short History of Animation

Phenakistoscope

• 1872 Phenakistoscope invented - produced an illusion of movement

Funny Faces• 1906 J. Stuart Blackton

made the first animated film which he called "Humorous phases of funny faces."

• His method was to draw comical faces on a blackboard and film them. He would stop the film, erase one face to draw another, and then film the newly drawn face.

Little Nemo

• 1911 Winsor McCay produced an animation sequence using his comic strip character "Little Nemo." •It was colorized

by hand

Gertie, The Trained Dinosaur

• Winsor McCay produced a cartoon called "Gertie, The Trained Dinosaur" which amazingly consisted of 10,000 drawings.

Gertie

• It was shown as a film in the theaters and also as a multi media event on stage with McCay interacting with the animated Gertie.

Felix the Cat

• 1920 FELIX THE CAT, the most popular character and series of this period, started as the Feline Follies from Sullivan's studio.

More Felix

• The merchandising of Felix's image for dolls, watches, etc was very successful and paved the way for the later merchandising of animated characters.

Mickey Mouse

• 1928 STEAMBOAT WILLIE was the first successful sound animated film; it made Mickey an international star, and launched the Disney studio of today.

• When Disney used sound for the first time in Steamboat Willie (1928), he gained an advantage over his competitors.

More Mickey

• According to Disney, "Mickey Mouse's official birthday is November 18, 1928 when he made his first film debut in Steamboat Willie. This was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon released.

• Mickey Mouse’s image is the most reproduced in the world. Over 7,500 items bear his likeness. Jesus is number two, and Elvis is number three.

Even More Mickey

• Critics came to see in Mickey Mouse as blend of Charlie Chaplin in his championing of the underdog, Douglas Fairbanks in his rascally adventurous spirit, and Fred Astaire in his grace and freedom from gravity's laws.

Betty Boop

In 1930 Betty Boop was first created as a dog character by Grim Natwick and appeared as the girl friend of another dog named Bimbo.

Betty Boop

• Betty's figure was modeled after Mae West's and her singing style taken from Helen Kane the "Boop-Boop-a-Doop" girl.

Looney ToonsThe Looney Tunes series, created by Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising, was introduced in 1930. A blatant rip-off of Disney's Silly Symphonies series, each Looney Tune was required to have one full chorus from a song from a Warner feature film.

Looney Toons

• The cartoons typically were run prior to the main feature at theaters, and the idea was that they would promote WB product. (Among other things, the company had various music-publishing concerns.) The schedule called for a new cartoon approximately once a month.

Merrie Melodies

• Merrie Melodies also featured Warner songs, but where Tunes had regular characters, Melodies for the most part were one-shots, without continuing characters. Another difference was that Melodies were shot in color starting in 1934, while Tunes stayed black and white.

More Warner Bros.

• 1936

• Tex Avery's first film at Warner's - Jones, Clampett, and Bo Cannon were also in the unit, which they called Termite Terrace.

Still at Warner’s

• Avery created or developed some of the most timeless characters in cartoon history with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Droopy Dog, along with the inimitable catch-phrase "What's up, doc?”

MGM

• Screwy's purpose, according to critic Greg Ford, was to "shatter audience complacency," which he did with some of the rudest gags on record.

Screwy Squirrel

MGM• More successful was the

series of World War II walking pin-ups that Avery created for American G.I.s stationed abroad.

• He changed Cinderella and Red Riding Hood into gorgeous sexpots who tantalize "the Wolf" (unnamed) and the audience with their lurid charms.

Jessica Rabbit

• These characters were the basis for "Jessica Rabbit" in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but equally fun for audiences were the Wolf's reactions to Cinderella/Red's come-ons.

Snow White

• 1937 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS

Walt Disney• Walt Disney

invented both Mickey Mouse and the multiplane camera. Disney was granted U.S patent 2,201,689 for the "art on animation" camera on May 1, 1940.

Multiplane Camera• The multiplane used stacked

planes of glass each painted with different elements of the animation. This allowed the animator to re-use the same background, foreground, or any elements not in motion, saving hours of labor. The exposure differences for each plane was calculated.

Storyboards

• Disney's other innovations in animation technology were the use of a storyboard to review the story and the use of pencil sketches to review motion.

Stop Motion Animation

• Typically stop motion animation is being used to animate things that are not life-size. Some things don't scale down well or stay under your control, eg water, so substitutions need to be made.

Stop Motion Animation

• Stop-motion animation was frequently combined with live action scenes.

Stop Motion Animation

• Filming the live action scenes first they could be back-projected, 1 frame at a time, behind the stop-motion scene, or front projected, 1 frame at a time, onto glass plates in front of the stop-motion scene, or eventually in the 70s combined with the live action scenes and/or other stop-motion models using blue-screen.

Stop Motion Animation

• Originally, and still today, you have a team of people moving the models once per frame, especially for 'living' creatures.

Stop Motion Animation• Machines were

originally done by hand as well, but in the 70s computer controlled motion rigs took over this job. Here the computers were programmed to move the model in a given, repeatable, pattern.

King Kong

• Willis O'Brian of King Kong fame is usually considered the dean of stop-action animation.

Ray Harryhausen

• His understudy who went on to do impressive work in his own right was Ray Harryhausen (Mighty Joe Young, Jason and the Argonauts).

Claymation

• Claymation is the art of making clay figures move, talk, sing, dance or whatever your imagination wants it to do!

Claymation

• Sometimes called plasticine, figures and props are molded from clay and are then used to tell a story. Using stop motion photography the frames are then run together to produce an animation.

Computer Animation• Computer animation

is considered by many to be actually closer to other animation techniques rather than traditional hand-drawn animation.

• Often it is compared to stop motion animation

• Early on, Computer Graphics (CG) appeared in a variety of movies in which it was used as computer graphics (that is, the CG was not intended to fool the audience into thinking it was anything other than CG). For example, Future World (1976) and Star Wars (1977, Image West) fall into this category.

Tron• Tron (1982)

integrated computer animation with live action, but, since the action took place in a computer, the CG didn't have to look realistic (and didn't). This was the first time CG was used as an integral part of a movie.

The Last Starfighter• One main use of CG has

been to replace physical models. In this case, CG is used to create realistic elements which are intermixed with the live action. The Last Star Fighter (1984) used computer animation instead of building models for special effects.

• CG is also used to create 'alien' creatures. Creatures which are supposed to be realistic, but don't have to match anything that the audience is familiar with. The Abyss (1989) is one such movie in which CG is used to effect an alien creature which is integrated with the rest of the live action. Some of the CG in Terminator II served a similar purpose as well as Casper(1995), Species (1995), Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.

• More challenging is the use of CG to create realistic models of creatures that are familiar to the audience.

Jurassic Park• Jurassic Park (1993) was the first to

completely integrate use of CG character animation in which the graphics were designed so as to blend in with the live action so that it was difficult to tell what was computer generated and what wasn't.

Computer Animation Animation• Of course, one use of

computer animation is simply to 'do animation.' By that I mean computer animation is used to produce animated pieces which would otherwise be done by more traditional means - essentially 3D cartoons

Pixar

• Toy Story (1995, Pixar, Disney), the first full length fully computer-generated 3D animation, would fall into a category of 3D cartoon