Animation History.

Animation consists of visual images which show illustrations and how they gradually move and act within the drawings themselves.

One of the earliest forms of animation, or “Pre-Animation” as it is referred to, is Cinematography. Cinematography can be named, in its simplest form, as the “trick of light and movement.” This is done by projecting a number of still images at a fast pace, this then creates the illusion of movement because the human eye cannot keep up and cannot detect any jumps or flaws in the movement. An object capable of doing such an action is named the Zoetrope. 

The body of the Zoetrope is placed on a lampshade-equivalent stand and this gives it the opportunity to spin at a fairly quick pace. It has thin rectangular holes located all around the side of the body, which can be referred to as “slits,” and each slit corresponds to a number on a strip of paper, which is fitted inside the body, that has drawings on.

The Zoetrope resembles the shape of a drum which was designed to make a collection of images, which were hand-drawn, move at a rapid pace and give off the illusion that they are moving. 

 The drawings are all done in a sequence, and each

 drawing in the sequence, from first to last, only differs slightly from the next to show a gradual change, which will run smoother than having more significant changes, making the transaction jumpy and show flaws in the animation. The first and very basic version of the contraption was invented in the early 1830’s , by William George Horner, and a similar model was created in the late 1870’s by Emile Reynaund, the main difference being that the drawings were then reflected by the means of a mirror, which in turn made the process considerably more gentle. This in turn affected the images positively, making they’re actions and movements more consecutive and uninterrupted. 

An

important point in Animation History occurred when English Photographer, Eadward Muybridge, who came to fame in 1868, after moving to America. He took some scenic photographs of the Yosemite Valley, which caught attention of Leland Stanford. Stanford then hired Muybridge to prove a theory of his through the means of photography. He wanted Muybridge to take consecutive photographs of a horse in trotting motion, to prove his theory that a horse’s legs were lifted simultaneously whilst doing so. However, in order to achieve the outcome that Stanford wanted, Muybridge would have to develop a specially designed fast shutter, aligned between 12 – 24 cameras, which eventually lead onto him proving Stanford’s theory to be correct. From then on, Muybridge began to focus heavily on and gave lectures on the subject of the locomotion of animals and both humans alike, he was aided through this with the help of his Zoopraxiscope. 

The Zoopraxiscope can be described in its simplest form as midpoint creation between the Zoetrope and todays Film Projector. It works by displaying a series of static photographs at a heightened speed, thus giving us an 1800’s version of the popular internet GIF image. The body of the Zoopraxiscope is made up from a selection of different pieces; there is a disc which (depending on the age of the model,) could be between 14 and 16 inches in diameter, and the model for this had a series of shutters that were removable, along with allocated slots. These slots had a variation of numbers to create a number or different movement effects. Similar to the later “Film Projector,” the discs had paper edges, with a leathery texture to make it more durable when attached to the machine. The disc works in a similar fashion to the zoetrope’s base; they contain a series of images, more often than not they are drawn as a silhouette so they are more visible to the viewers. 

One of the most notable methods of Animation was done by Rotoscoping; Usually, a sequence of illustrations have been drawn by the means of tracing, giving ever so slight changes to the images every time they have been traced.  Each individual illustration is then photographed. This then creates the art of movement when they are played back at the appropriate timing (which differs as to the amount of images drawn.)   

The early stages of this kind of animation started to appear around 1913 and it would seem to be extremely tough and extensive work to be produced on a mass scale as there was a demand for a certain amount of photographs per minute of film. Also, until the creation of celluloid (which back then was animation’s first tracing paper,) the animators would have to keep repeating more difficult and time consuming aspects of the image, such as fore and backgrounds because other than the space that the character was drawn onto, the image would be clear and see through.  So instead of having to create the same images over and over, the animators were able to reuse the background images, with a different selection of characters in the foreground as long as they weren't moving out of shot.

 The early stages of this kind of animation started to appear around 1913 and it would seem to be extremely tough and extensive work to be produced on a mass scale as there was a demand for a certain amount of photographs per minute of film. Also, until the creation of celluloid (which back then was animation’s first tracing paper,) the animators would have to keep repeating more difficult and time consuming aspects of the image, such as fore and backgrounds because other than the space that the character was drawn onto, the image would be clear and see through.  So instead of having to create the same images over and over, the animators were able to reuse the background images, with a different selection of characters in the foreground as long as they weren’t moving out of shot.

 Disney went on to use Rotoscoping as the basis for their work, which resulted in what’s known today as “recycling animation,” to many of their fans. This is because of growing speculation over certain films, particularly in dance scenes, where movements from characters are exactly the same in one movie, as another. This occurred in a number of films, such as “The Jungle Book,” “Robin Hood,” “Snow White” “The Sword in the Stone,” and “The Aristocats.”

In my personal opinion, it does make sense that Disney reused the drawings, as Rotoscoping has been defined as a rather tedious and delicate procedure, it would save days, possibly weeks of effort and money.

 On another note, the majority of Disney’s 
Rotoscoping techniques were traced over real
 life human beings, the first ever being “Snow 
White,” who was based on the American dancer
 Marge Champion , who also starred as a model 
for the gorgeous Blue Fairy in

 Disney’s 1940 film,  Pinocchio. 

Once the animators were able to get an idea of what

 the characters looked like, the next step was being

 able to make them move, in other words, to animate

 them;

One Artist in particular who specialised in the movement of characters was
 Preston Blair.  Preston Blair, a native to California, had studied the subject of 
Art at Otis Art institute and then proceeded to study Illustration at Chouinard
 Art Institute. Blair excelled to be one of the few, first fine Artists of Animation. 
Whilst working at the Walt Disney Studios he created and animated characters
 such as Mickey Mouse in the wondrous feature film “Fantasia,” and the hippos
 in the animation named “The Dance of the Hours,” as well as being responsible
 for segments of Pinocchio, and Brown Owl from “Bambi” explaining the term “Twitterpatted,” also Blair also worked as a director at MGM studios. He 
directed short shows of the famous Barney Bear.

 He focused for a long time on the positioning and movement of characters 
within a certain space; although with cartoon-style images, the proportions 
of the body and the positioning of the body is extremely exaggerated. 
In the image entitled “Movements of
 the Two legged Figure,” the “Shuffle,” and the “Sneak,” sequences are
 extremely over exaggerated, I feel this would be to add some sort of 
comedy value, and facial expressions would be added to greaten that
 effect. The “Strut” also shows slight exaggeration, and the 5^th image
 along, shows the character almost squatting and becoming very small.
 He then moved onto the subject
 of animals, he states on page 6 of his book “Animation 1: Learn to Animate Cartoons Step by Step,” that
 in order to create still characters in a moving position, the animator must first make a “Line of Action,” 
which accentuates what direction the character is going, how much force is being applied to their action, whether there is sound intended with their action of if they are meaning to be quiet.