Animation

Timeline

BY Andrew Clements

40,000 Bc

The earliest form form of animation was created in the Aurignacian period around 40,00Bc in caves around the world, most famous in France, by painting images on to the wall and ceilings, they believed they moved with the flickering of the fire.

7,000 Bc

Shadow puppetry is an old art form of story telling created with parchment paper puppets first scene in china around 7,000 Bc but popular with the Middle East, especially in India .Where light is shone behind illuminating the puppets in front

2,000Bc

The Ancient Greeks used vases to depict Greek society and fables with a series of pictures re-enact scenes

1660’s Ad

The Magic Lantern was the first form of projecting an image onto a screen using an oil burning lamp creating the light source, the magic lantern is similar to a slide show where a series of small paintings passed the light projecting them on screen, usually the paintings are from unexplored and foreign country's showing tigers and lions ect.

1825 Ad

Nicéphore Niépe is the creator of he first ever picture was taken using a series of chemicals on a metal plate, looking out of his window onto the roofs at Le Gras. This was influential on the animation scene as it showed images can be captured leading to the creation of stop motion

1830’s Ad

The first Parlor games are invented showing the invention of moving images at home, the phenakistocope and zoetrope both displayed the movement of images showing a couple of seconds of footage. Both machines had small slits in the side of the machine to look in, seeing the animation. In terms of the history of animation it was the first step into animation, film and photography at home.

1845 Ad

Lumieres further then went onto holding their first ever private screening of projected motion pictures in Paris 1845. An admission charge was also added due to it being the first ever private screening.

1860’s AdThe flip Book was invented by Barnes Linnett a book of images when flicked through created a short animation, each drawing was slightly different from the one previous giving the illusion of a moving image, in turn creating a short animated story. A couple of years later Herman Casler created the Mutoscope the mechanical version of the flipbook by paying a penny you could see the short animated story, usually the mutoscope animations was slightly racier with the most famous being “what the butler saw”

1860’s Ad

Edweard Muybridge was a pioneer of photography as well as stop motion. By setting up a series of cameras he set out to prove the theory that a one time all hoofs of a horse are off the ground, by adding a shutter to the camera he succeeded proving the theory and creating stop motion as the camera only exposed a second of footage.

1880’s AdCharles-Émile Reynaud was a French pioneer and the man who invented the Praxinoscope which was a spinning drum with a selection of mirrors you viewed the animation from and was the successor of the Zoetrope. The Praxinoscope was invented in 1877. It useds strips of photographs or drawings placed on the inside rim of the machine. In 1889 Reynaud developed one of the first projectors the Théâtre Optique, an improved version of the Praxinoscope capable of projecting the images onto a screen from a longer roll of pictures, this allowed him to show drawn animated cartoon to larger audiences.

Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès Was one of the first creator of special effects. By accident he discovered when his camera broke down and when he had the film developed the bus had disappeared! He thought that if you freeze the camera, like he did with the bus, and move it to a new location you could create the illusion of magic of a disappearing and re-appearing object. Méliès used this technique through out his career.

1895 Ad

William Harbutt invented plastacine. Combining clay and oil. After this discovery he then further finessed the technique of model animation which evolved into films such as Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit.

1897 Ad

Arthur Melbourne-Cooper is the creator of the oldest existing animation on record, the animation was created for Birds Custard and was the first recorded use of animation in advertising.

1914 Ad

Winsor McCay who was an animator, produced the first proper animated film for the cinemas which was Gertie the Dinosaur. He would show realism through this animation as when the dinosaur got closer to the screen he would make it bigger which in real life (perspective), He also made it eat the tree and a boulder.

1915 Ad

CELL or Cellulouse Actete was developed within this time period, this entails clear plastic which enables drawings to be made in layers, so the background image can have added detail on top but still seeing the image behind. so the images used look much more realistic and would further enable depth for the film.

1920 Ad

Within the 1920’s, sound was then further added onto films. The sound was then synchronized onto movies. This made films a lot more successful as individuals could then also watch and listen to what was going on, feelings of characters could then be further expressed through speech.

1928 Ad

In 1928 Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie( Mickey Mouse) made his first appearance, this was the first successful animated film and also the first animated film to use synchronized sound.

1930 AdIn the 1930’s color was added to film. In 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the first full length animated feature film to be released in Technicolor. This was one of the first films to use Rotoscoping, a process of tracing real life people and then turning it into animation. So the movements of the body are more realistic, than if they were just to be drawn by hand, they were capturing the motion. For the time it was like CGI.

1962 Ad

Willis O’Brien was an American motion picture special effects and a stop motion animation pioneer. He created the dinosaur and animated them for The Lost World and King Kong.

1980 Ad

‘Tron’ the first ever animated film made by computer technology, this meant that the use of hand made/hand drawn images and features would not be useful. It was released by Walt Disney productions.

1995 AdThe first ever Toy Story film was created in 1995, it was the first full-length all-computer-generated animated film up to this period. It was also the first ever film produced by Pixar. The full film was produced by computer technology which led to hand drawn images not being need anymore for filming, this is how computer technology taken over and dominated.

Ray Harryhausen

Was an outstanding visual effects creator, writer and producer and the creator of 3D motion model animation know as Dynamation working on major films through a 60 year career. working on major blockbuster such as Jason and the Argonauts, original King Kong and Clash of the Titans.

2009 Ad

The Princess and the Frog is the last traditional animated film Disney ever made before using CGI to make their animated films, after Home on the Range.

The traditional animation is using hand drawn images to create the frames the next slightly different from the previous.