History of animation

This article is about the history of traditional animation. For the history of stop motion animation, see Stop motion. For the history of computer animation, see History of computer animation.
While the history of animation began much earlier, this article is concerned with the development of the medium after the emergence of celluloid film in 1888, as produced for theatrical screenings, television and (non-interactive) home video.
Between 1895 and 1920, during the rise of the cinematic industry, several different animation techniques were re-invented or newly developed, including stop-motion with objects, puppets, clay or cutouts, and drawn or painted animation. Hand-drawn animation, mostly animation painted on cels, was the dominant technique throughout most of the 20th century and became known as traditional animation.
Around the turn of the millennium, computer animation became the dominant animation technique in most regions (while hand-drawn animation continued to be very popular all around the world; for example, Japanese anime and European hand-drawn productions). Computer animation is mostly associated with a three-dimensional appearance with detailed shading, although many different animation styles have been generated or simulated with computers. Some productions may be recognized as Flash animation, but in practice, computer animation with a relatively two-dimensional appearance, stark outlines and little shading, will generally be considered "traditional animation". For instance, the first feature movie made on computers, without a camera, is The Rescuers Down Under (1990), but its style can hardly be distinguished from cel animation.

Influence of predecessors

1888–1909: Earliest animations on film
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Pauvre Pierrot (1892) repainted clipThéâtre Optique
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Main article: Théâtre Optique
Charles-Émile Reynaud developed his projection praxinoscope into the Théâtre Optique with transparent hand-painted colorful pictures in a long perforated strip wound between two spools, patented in December 1888. From 28 October 1892 to March 1900 Reynaud gave over 12,800 shows to a total of over 500,000 visitors at the Musée Grévin in Paris. His Pantomimes Lumineuses series of animated films each contained 300 to 700 frames manipulated back and forth to last 10 to 15 minutes per film. A background scene was projected separately. Piano music, song and some dialogue were performed live, while some sound effects were synchronized with an electromagnet. The first program included three cartoons: Pauvre Pierrot (created in 1892), Un bon bock (created in 1892, now lost), and Le Clown et ses chiens (created in 1892, now lost). Later on the titles Autour d'une cabine (created in 1894) and A rêve au coin du feu (created in 1894) would be part of the performances.

Standard picture film
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Despite the success of Reynaud's films, it took some time before animation was adapted in the film industry that came about after the introduction of Lumiere's Cinematograph in 1895. Georges Méliès' early fantasy films and trick films (released between 1896 and 1913) occasionally contain elements that somewhat resemble animation, including painted props or painted creatures that were moved in front of painted backgrounds (mostly using wires), and film colorization by hand. Méliès also popularized the stop trick, with a single change made to the scene in between shots, that had already been used in Thomas Edison's The Execution of Mary Stuart in 1895 and probably led to the development of stop-motion animation some years later.[1] It seems to have lasted until 1906, before proper animated films appeared in cinemas. The dating of some presumed earlier films with animation is contested, while other early films that may have used stop motion or other animation techniques are lost or unidentified, and thus can't be checked.

Printed animation film
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Katsudō Shashin (c. 1907)
By 1897, German toy manufacturer Gebrüder Bing had a first prototype of their toy "kinematograph",[2] which they eventually presented at a toy convention in Leipzig in November 1898. Soon after, other toy manufacturers in Germany and France, including Ernst Plank, Georges Carette, and Lapierre, started selling similar devices. The toy cinematographs were basically traditional toy magic lanterns, adapted with one or two small spools that used standard "Edison perforation" 35mm film, a crank, and a shutter. These projectors were intended for the same type of "home entertainment" toy market that most of the manufacturers already provided with praxinoscopes and magic lanterns. Apart from relatively expensive live-action films, the manufacturers produced many cheaper films by printing lithographed drawings. These animations were probably made in black-and-white from around 1898 or 1899, but at the latest by 1902 they were made in color. The pictures were often traced from live-action films (much like the later rotoscoping technique). These very short films typically depicted a simple repetitive action and most were designed to be projected as a loop - playing endlessly with the film ends put together. The lithograph process and the loop format follow the tradition that was set by the stroboscopic disc, zoetrope and praxinoscope.[3][4]
Katsudō Shashin (between 1907 and 1912), speculated to be the oldest work of animation in Japan, was probably made in imitation of similar Western printed film strips.[5]

J. Stuart Blackton
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The Enchanted Drawing (1900)
J. Stuart Blackton was a British-American filmmaker, co-founder of the Vitagraph Studios and one of the first to use animation in his films. His The Enchanted Drawing (1900) can be regarded as the first theatrical film recorded on standard picture film that included animated elements, although this concerns just a few frames of changes in drawings. It shows Blackton doing "lightning sketches" of a face, cigars, a bottle of wine and a glass. The face changes expression when Blackton pours wine into the face's mouth and when Blackton takes his cigar. The technique used in this film was basically the stop trick: the single change to the scenes was the replacement of a drawing by a similar drawing with a different facial expression. In some scenes, a drawn bottle and glass were replaced by real objects. Blackton had possibly used the same technique in a lost 1896 lightning sketch film.[1]
Blackton's 1906 film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is often regarded as the oldest known hand-drawn animation on standard film. It features a sequence made with blackboard drawings that are changed between frames to show two faces changing expressions and some billowing cigar smoke, as well as two sequences that feature cutout animation with a similar look for more fluid motion.

Alexander Shiryaev
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Alexander Shiryaev was a Russian ballet dancer, ballet master and choreographer who served at the Mariinsky Theatre who is credited with the independent invention of stop motion animation. From 1906 to 1909, created the earliest known animated films made in Russia, using puppet animation, drawn animation, and mixed techniques. While some were made as experiments (for example, a 20-minute drawn animation showing the flight of birds in a continuous line), most of them were made for educational purpose of showing the ballet dancers what their choreography should look like. The puppet animations ranged in length from just over a minute to 10 minutes long. Shiryaev's films were only screened within the Mariinsky Theatre for the performers, not publicly, and were generally unknown until 2003, when Russian documentarist and ballet historian Viktor Bocharov released a one-hour movie titled A Belated Premiere which included fragments of the various films.

Segundo de Chomón
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Spanish filmmaker Segundo de Chomón made many trick films for French film company Pathé. By 1906, he used stop motion in several short films, including La maison ensorcelée[6] and Le théâtre de Bob[7] (both released in the US in April 1906). Blackton's The Haunted Hotel (23 February 1907)[8] contains stop motion elements that are very similar to those in La maison ensorcelée. If the release dates are correct (and if translated titles have not been mixed up), Blackton must have been inspired by De Chomón's work rather than vice versa, but it has been believed that The Haunted Hotel was a big hit in France and other European countries, and would have been the film that inspired local filmmakers, including Émile Cohl, to start working with the innovative animation technique.[1] De Chomon also made the related short film Hôtel électrique (1908), which includes a short scene with pixilation.

Émile Cohl
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Fantasmagorie (1908)
In 1907, the French artist Émile Cohl started his filmmaking career with Japon de faintasie,[9] with imaginative use of stop motion techniques. His next short can be regarded as the first animated film using what came to be known as traditional animation methods: the 1908 Fantasmagorie.[10] The film largely consists of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There are also sections of live action where the animator's hands enters the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look. Cohl later went to Fort Lee, New Jersey near New York City in 1912, where he worked