Week 1 : History Of Animation Documentary

1609 – 1900s Devices of moving pictures

The history of animation can be traced to 1609, a machine called “Magic Lantern” was invented. It is a machine that can pose and move pictures and project them on wall for audiences.

Then until 1800s, more toys, devices were invented, such as “Thaumatrope” and “Zoetrope”.

Thaumatrope is a toy made of paper disk and rope that has two pictures on both sides and can generate a single combined image when spun quickly ; Zoetrope is a pre-film animation device that creates the illusion of motion from a sequence of static images, e.g. horse running.

1900s – Animation started showing on big screen!

Humorous phases of funny faces is the first animated cartoon film, it is a series of pictures consists of a man and a woman.

Gertie the dinosaur is the first animated character. In the film, she was given commands of its creator and it was funny.

1928 – Animation started to develop next step

Steamboat Willie directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks was the first animation using sound and music. The exaggeration of violence put impact on child cartoons later such as “the Simpsons”.

1929 – The Great Depression

The Wall Street crash of 1929 leads to great 10-year depression, people lost jobs and money that they couldn’t feed their selves and families, bored but couldn’t go to other places for entertainment except theatre, so people turn to watch lots of cartoons.

Because of the great depression, more and more cartoons been made and people’s love for animation grew stronger. (so does games in recent years?)

1937- Snow White and the seven dwarfs

Snow White and the seven dwarfs was the first animated movie created by Walt Disney. This movie used lots of new techniques e.g. rotoscope (an animation and visual effects technique where artists trace over live-action video footage, frame by frame, to create realistic movement or isolate subjects.), Multiplane Camera (a specialized motion-picture device used in traditional animation to create a realistic illusion of three-dimensional depth and parallax.)

Snow white is also famous for its characteristic, each dwarfs have their own character.

1969 – Looney Tunes and Claymation

Claymation (stop-motion animation) was used before CGI for realistic creatures like monsters or dinosaurs in Hollywood.

For example, in film “Jason and the Argonauts”, skeleton soldiers rising up from the underworld was made of clay.

1970 – booming

Shows increasing, children being lazier, stay high and watching cartoons. Animations also started being used in advertisement.

1986 – Pixar

Steve Jobs bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm then renamed it Pixar Animation Studios making CGI (computer generated imagery).

Toy story was a great hit in the box office making 350,000,000 dollars.