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Chinese Magic Lantern
A magic lantern is an early type of image projector, an ancestor of the modern slide projector.
The most widely accepted theory is that Christiaan Huygens developed the original device in the late 1650s. The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture and hit a lens. The lens throws an enlarged picture of the original image from the slide onto a screen. -
Thaumatrope
A thaumatrope was a toy used in the Victorian era; a small circular disk or card with two different pictures on each side, it was attached to a piece of string or a pair of strings running through the centre. When the string was twirled quickly between the fingers, the two pictures appear to combine into a single image. The thaumatrope demonstrates the Phi phenomenon. Phi is the capability of the brain to persistantly perceive an image. -
Phenakistiscope
Using persistence of vision, this device creates an illusion of motion using the PHI phenomena. This principle had been recognized by the Greek mathematician Euclid and later in experiments by Newton, but it wasn't until 1829 that this principle became firmly established by the Belgian Joseph Plateau.The work Phenakistiscope comes from a Greek word phenakizein, meaning "to deceive" or "to cheat" as it cheats the eye into believing that it is seeing moving images. -
Phenakistiscope Continued...
The phenakistoscope used a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Around the middle were the series of images, and cut through it were radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The user saw a single moving picture. This device was unlike the Zoetrope and other similar devices as it could only be used by one person at a time. It lost its fame in about 2 years due to the increasing technology. -
Phenakitstoscope
This device was built by Dr. Joseph Antoine Plateau (a Belgian scientist) and Dr. Simon Rittrer. It machine produced an illusion of movement by allowing a viewer to gaze at a rotating disk containing small windows; behind the windows was another disk containing a sequence of images. When the disks were rotated fast enough, the synchronization of the windows with the images created an 2D animated effect. -
Modern Zoetrope
This modern Zoetrope was created by British mathematician William George Horner who called his device 'daedalum'.This didn't quite become so popular until the 1860s, when it was patented by both English and American makers.
The zoetrope worked on the same principles as the phenakistoscope, but the pictures were drawn on a strip which could be set around the bottom third of a metal drum, with the slits now cut in the upper section of the drum. -
Modern Zoetrope Continued
The drum was mounted on a spindle and spun so that the viewers could look through the splits and see the cartoon strip form moving images.The faster the drum spun, the smoother were the images. -
The Flip Book
Flip books are, as the name suggest, books that have a drawing on each page, successing the other so that when the book is flicked through it looks as if the images are moving by simulating motion or some other change. This is affected by something called persistence of vision when an image stays on the retina of the eye after a short interval after its seen the picture. They were the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular (like the phenakistoscope) -
Praxinoscope
The praxinoscope was the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France by Charles-Émile Reynaud. It was similar to the Zoetrope however, the praxinoscope had an inner circle of mirrors, Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope.
Praxinoscope's origin comes from the Greek language; meanin action-viewer. -
Theatre Optique
An improvement on the praxinoscope, the theatre optique (Optical Theatre) was was created by Emile Reyhaud. The "theater optique" produced images on a screen with the assistance of a projector and several mirrors.These images were painted on a lengthy ribbon that was attached to 2 spools, one that unwound the ribbon and one that wound it. -
Kinetoscope
The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. This device set the standards for the movie projector that would come out. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. -
Mutoscope
The Mutoscope was an early motion picture device, patented by Herman Casler. It was a 2D device that only allowed one viewer at a time similar to the Zoetrope. The Mutoscope was similar to the "flip book." The individual image frames were conventional black-and-white, silver-based photographic prints on tough, flexible opaque cards. Rather than being bound into a booklet, the cards were attached to a circular core. -
Sound Film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900. -
First Animated Films
Short Films: The first animated short film to be produced was by Charles-Émile Reynaud who created an experimental animation system. J. Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) was the first animation on standard film.
Feature Length: El Apóstol (1917) by Quirino Cristiani was the first animated feature length film. It used cardboard cutouts in the style of political cartoons.
Cel-animated feature length film: the first one was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Walt Disney (1937) -
Winsor McCay and the Animation Studios
Animator Winsor McKay made his first 2D animated film in the early 20th century - “Gertie the Dinosaur”. He was best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and it was his set standard that later Walt Disney came to use. He was raised in Michigan, where he started drawing at a very early age. At the age of 13 he drew a picture of shipwreck on the school blackboard and it was photographed and copies sold out. -
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented and then improved over several decades. It was most used in Hollywood between 1922 and 1952. This technique was used most commonly for filming musicals such as The Wizard of Oz and Singin' in the Rain, costume pictures such as The Adventures of Robin Hood and Joan of Arc, and animated films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia. -
The Fleischers
The company had its start when Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope, which allowed for extremely lifelike animation. Using this device, the Fleischer brothers got a contract with Bray Studio in 1919 to produce their own series called Out of the Inkwell, which featured their first characters. They were Disney's rivals and used animation as well as live action to make this movie. However, due to financial troubles, they were soon out business. -
Warner Bros
The creators of Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies, the Warners Bros proved a much more successful rival to Walt Disney. They also used rotoscoping techniques. Like the Fleischers, they adopted a more adult sensibilities, spearheaded by animators like Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. -
Drawn-on-film Animation
In this 2D animation technique footage is produced by creating the images directly on film stock, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects are photographed frame by frame with an animation camera.There are two basic methods to produce animation directly on film. One starts with blank film stock, the other one with black (already developed) film. The first people who used this technique include Len Lye, Norman McLaren (as seen in picture) and Stan Brakhage, -
Electro-Mechanical Zoetrope
Sega (a multinational video game software developer, an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Japan, with various offices around the world) used a mechanism similar to an ancient zoetrope in order to create electro-mechanical arcade games that would resemble later first-person video games. -
Keyframe Animation
The technique of keyframe animation was derived originally from a system developed by Walt Disney. The crux of the system depended on the ability of the animators to sketch various keyframes and then be able to generate realistic looking 'in-betweens' (known as tweening). It is a trial-and-error process where the keyframes are edited until they produce the desired effect. One of the first applications of key frame animation was the award-wining 1974 animated short film, Hunger. -
Jurassic Park
Phil Tippett (born 1951) is a movie director and an award-winning visual effects supervisor and producer, who specializes in creature design and character animation. He was hired to create the dinosaur effects for Jurassic Park using his go motion technique. -
Cutout Animation
Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The world's earliest known animated feature films were cutout animations (made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani).
Today, cutout-style animation is still produced, though instead of materials it uses scanned images or vector graphics. An example is Southpark and Blues Clues. -
Walt Disney
The Princess and the Frog, the first 2D-animated film, was released in late 2009, and succeeded in renewing interest in the medium. A decade after Messmer, Walt Disney capitalized upon that trend by delivering a bevy of beloved characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. -
Fantastic Mr.Fox
Produced by Regency Enterprises and Indian Paintbrush, Fantastic Mr. Fox is a 2009 American stop-motion animated film based on the Roald Dahl children's novel. Each frame of the film was shot individually for each motion of a puppet or model.
