The Events of Animation

By Kian Shanahan

  • Early 19th Century

    In the early 1800's, even before the invention of the motion picture camera, Eadweard Muybridge used sequential photographs to analyse animal and human movement. Devices such as the thaumatrope, praxinoscope and zoetrope made the first motion picture animation by quickly flashing a calibrated sequence of still photos in front of viewers. These devices took advantage of the way the brain reads a series of images while moving the different props inside the image, creating the illusion of movement.

  • Théâtre Optique

    In 1892, Émile Reynaud opened his popular Théâtre Optique in Paris, where he projected films that had been drawn directly on transparent celluloid, this technique was not used again until the 1930's.

  • 20th Century

    During the 20th century, filmers such as J. Stuart Blackton and Winsor McCay in the U.S. and Émile Cohl were in France making whole movies from pictures and drawings.

  • Cartoons

    During 1914, Raoul Barré and Bill Nolan opened the first ever animation studio in New York. Soon studios in New York, California and elsewhere were producing short films that screened in cinemas before the real film was on. Over the next few decades, cartoon series flourished, featuring popular characters such as Felix the Cat, Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Wile E. Coyote. In the 1940s, George Pal’s Puppeteers represented one of the few examples of animation using three dimensions.

  • Rotoscope

    During 1917, brothers Max and Dave Fleischer, creators of Betty Boop, changed the rotoscope enabling it so that animators copy the movement of live action by tracing filmed live-action images frame by frame.

  • Disney

    In 1923,Walt, Roy Disney and other animators formed a company which would dominate all others. During their productions not only did the studio’s animators produce finely drawn films, but they emphasised unique, specific characters and movement that revealed the characters’ personalities. The Disney studio produced the first movie which had lots of sound and they also produced the short three-colour Technicolor film Flowers and Trees which won the first Oscar for animation in 1932.

  • Disney Toy Story

    In 1995, Disney released the Pixar production Toy Story making it the first feature-length computer-animated film and was soon given an Academy honored with a special award to its creator, John Lasseter.