Early Animation and Its Early Pioneers
Animation is among the forms of visual communication pervading the world. This is seen on TV channels and smartphones among other gadgets. How, when and where it began does not concern many people. With reference to that, below is a brief history of the medium was developed and the pioneers concerned.
- ÉmileCohl (1908)
ÉmileCohl, a French cartoonist and animator also known to many as “the father of the animated cartoon,” is one of the pioneers of animation dated back to 1907. He did this placing each drawing on an illuminated glass plate and drew the next drawing, reflecting the variations required to show movement. He repeated the procedure until he had 700 drawings. For the animation to like a chalk drawing he went ahead and print black lines filmed on a paper into negative.
- Georges Méliès (1902)
Georges Méliès, a French filmmaker is known as the first cinemagician because of his early use of cinema with some special effects. He directed 531 films, with each film showing single in-camera effects throughout and each taking between 0-40 minutes between the year 1896 and 1914.
His work can be accessed in Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913).
- Winsor Mccay (1911)
Winsor McCay (1869-1964) is a times referred to as the fathers of “true” animation. He was a cartoonist and artist. In 1911, he developed a film, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics, having a two minute animation.
His work can be accessed Winsor McCay: His Life and Art for further look on his excellent work on animation.
4. Stuart Blackton
Stuart Blackton is a British filmmaker known for the first animation in America and also first in the whole world to use stop- motion in storytelling.
Blackton sketches a face, cigars, and a bottle of wine, then “removes” these last drawings as real objects so that the face appears to react as shown in one of his films.
His films are included in The Origins of American Animation, 1900-1921
- Eadweard J. Muybridge (1893)
Eadweard J. Muybridge an English photographer developed visual experiments with moving images. It was not a form of animation but known to form the basis of videography.
Though the work of English photographer Eadweard J. Muybridge isn’t animation, his animal locomotion studies are among the earliest visual experiments with moving images, laying the foundations for later forms of videography.
Muybridge used an early animation device called phenakistoscope to create an illusion of motion to expand his visual studies to animation in the year 1893.
His work and legacy is presented by Hans-Christian Adams in Eadweard Muybridge: The Human and Animal Locomotion Photographs.
Donald Crafton’s Before Mickey gives more information on the history of early animation from the year 1898- 1928
The Most Influential Animated Characters
Animated films are very popular. It is easy to come up with a list of many great characters from the vast arena of Disney feature films. Other animators were already in the industry before the likes of Snow white and Dumbo. The top 10 most influential animated characters include:
The Cameraman from The Cameraman’s Revenge
Ladislaw Starewicz was the father of object – animation in cine. He used real insects in the Cameraman’s revenge. The dead animated animals seem so real and authentic as if they had been trained to perform. The models and sets used were of high standards. Their movements were smooth and there was attention to detail. Starewicz influenced the works of Jiri Trnka and Terry Gilliam
Gertie the Dinosaur
Winsor McCay’s masterpiece was Gertie the Dinosaur which featured the first cartoon and was based on Brontosaurus skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History.
Felix the Cat
Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan Studios created Felix the cartoon figure. Felix was based on Charlie Chaplin and underwent a lot of transformation and became more rounded and pleasing to look at.
Mickey Mouse
A mouse was developed by Disney and made first appearance in Plane Crazy (1928) and was seen with sound a little later. Mickey was not very developed as a character at first, later became an icon. Mickey was featured on his own starring role in Fantasia (1940) and Fantasia 2000 (1999).
Betty Boop:
Max Fleischer created Betty as one strong and popular female cartoon character. Betty debuted in 1930 and started off as a minor character, later developed and became a star in her own series.
Bugs Bunny:
It emerged in 1940. It was one of the best characters to come out of Warner Bros. It took a while for it to be developed.
Tom & Jerry:
They are the original cat and mouse who are always in long running rivalry combined with extreme violence. The animation emerged in 1940.
Road Runner:
Coyote was created in 1948 and the audience always sympathizes with it. Road Runner, a non-talking character in a talkie, is in a battle with Coyote. This is the basis of the humor in the film.
The little grey wolf cub
It is mainly about memory and childhood and a little grey wolf is the main developed character. The wolf cub has been animated to discuss the themes of memory, history and political undertones.
Jan Svankmajer’s inanimate objects
Svankmajer’s Alice (1988) is a darker interpretation of Alice in Wonderland. The sock caterpillar has been animated and is full of imagination.
Anomalisa and new depths to animations
Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa last year raised the bar for stop motion animations. It brought a new sense to how puppets can be used to make the most human film of the year. The movie involves a character, Michael Stone, who is British, moderately famous, middle-aged and knows a few tricks about business strategies. He travels a lot, like George Clooney in Up in the Air, with dark circles under his eyes and headphones in his ears.
Anomalisa became the latest masterpiece of Kaufman after seven years of wait. In 2012, the crowdfunded campaign he started brought twice as much and helped increase the length of the short film to a full fledge award winner. It is not just another animation, but a film envisioned around the existential dread, a sad man who hates to tell strategies that help people listen to lies and stay happy on a telephone. While Michael rehearses his speech, he hates every word written in it. Actually, Kaufman recalls Anomalisa as supposed to be an audio only staged radio appearance with three actors, the same who we saw in the movie. Kaufman wanted the audience to imagine the film themselves. However, after he received funding, he managed to make a movie that was not aimed at the children but a film that would portray the voices of those who recorded it.
Anomalisa is a front-loaded movie in terms of conceptualization. As it a low budget film, they used a process called animatic. It includes recording the voices first and then using it to draw the movie board, after which the shots take place. As the film progresses, the animation takes over, and drawings fade. It is not something you can post-produce; it requires real-time ideas and instant application. The whole movie happens to be realistic, based on a real person so that it can engage the audience. As per Kaufman, there is a quality of imperfections that audience can find which makes it heartbreaking, beautiful and touching.
The success behind Zootopia
Walt Disney Co. has been making animated movies for a century now, but one of their recent work has made stunning headlines around the globe. Zootopia, the animated film involving animals living in peace together broke previous records of Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph. It made a whopping $75.1 million in its opening weekend.
It makes an astonishing competition for Pixar, which has always been able to outperform Disney. Moreover, Zootopia received the biggest opening for an animated film ever. What makes it interesting is the fact that Zootopia is not based on any book; neither had it had any big voices to work with. We can also work around a few of the critical points that show why Zootopia topped the charts. First is the timing of the film. It came a month after Kung Fu Panda 3 by DreamWorks Animation was released. Disney also had a great marketing strategy to work with. Disney used Judy Hopps, the hare from Bunny Burrow in a masterclass Super Bowl advert, making it an instant hit. It also had a brilliant message attached to it. Unlike many Oscar disappointments, it relied on the need to address prejudice and equality as a two-way street, while showing a plausible course of action for both. Overseas, Zootopia has topped more than $160 million in sales, while giving the message that both prey and predators can live together.
Much of the success can be attributed to Pixar. Toy Story, The Incredibles and Pixels have made names and hence it gave Disney a real push after it bought Pixar in 2008 for $7.4 billion. Disney has almost recovered most of the cost it invested in Pixar, with Up, Toy Story 3 and others making around $6 billion with animation success and Academy Awards. Zootopia has an immersive animation for all ages, it relies on the same Disney animation principles we are accustomed too, but it features a new wave of technological advancements. No wonder it has become the fourth consecutive hit for Disney after the purchase of Pixar.
The Art of Animation 
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