1410712025, 19:04 ‘Animation | History, Movies, Television, & Facts | Britannica yvent & Pop Cukute > Movie, 1V & Stage Development & Production animation artistic medium ‘Ask the Chatbot a Question |} More Actions {Also knoe a: orton fn ‘Weiten by Dave Ker Fact-checko by The Etos of Eneyelopedia Britannica ast Updated: Jan, 2095 «Arle History The Wild Robot Scene from the 2024 Science fiction animated film The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders. Table of Contents Top Questions Key People: Anno Hideaki « Mary Blair + Walt Disney + Frank Tashlin «Dr Seuss Whats animation? v ‘What place does Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs holdin the history of animation? Related Topics: anime + computer animation + abstract animation = ‘Who made the first film-based animation? v Claymation » cel animation Related Facts And Data: Late Attemaon - Facts «Bao short flm = Facts + Animal Behaviour - Facts Y Show more animation, the art of making inanimate objects appear to move, Animation is an artistic impulse that long predates the movies. History’s first recorded animator is Pygmalion of Greek and Roman mythology, a sculptor who created a figure of a woman so perfect that he fell in love with her and begged ‘Venus to bring her to life. Some of the same sense of magic, mystery, and transgression still adheres to contemporary film animation, which has made it a primary vehicle for exploring the overwhelming, often bewildering emotions of childhood—feelings once dealt with by folktales. See all related content Early history ‘The theory of the animated cartoon preceded the invention of the cinema by half a century. Early experimenters, working to create conversation pieces for Victorian parlors or new sensations for the touring magic-lantern shows, which were a popular form of entertainment, discovered the principle of pet drawings of the stages of an action were shown in fast succession, the human eye would perceive them as a continuous movement. One of the first commercially successful devices, invented by the Belgian Joseph Plateau in 1832, was the phenakistoscope, a spinning cardboard disk that created the illusion of movement when viewed in a mirror. In 1834 William Geo! rotating drum lined by a band of pictures that could be changed. The * "tine drm by way ofa series of sure Frenchman, ile Reynaud in 1876 adapted the principle into a form that could be projected before a theatrical audience. Reynaud became not only animation’s first entrepreneur but, with his gorgeously hand-painted ribbons of celluloid conveyed by a system of mirrors to a theater sereen, the first artist to give personality and warmth to his animated characters, ’ Zoetrope Tstration ofa zetrope, which .¢ Horner invented the zoetrope, a Crest the Mason of « meng bong win With the invention of sprocket-driven film stock, animation was poised for a great leap forward. Although “firsts” of any kind are never easy to establish, the first film-based animator appears to be J. Stuart Blackton, tips twwcbitannica.convar’animation wa‘saiorr2026, 19:04 whose Humorous Phases of Funny Faces in 1906 launched a successful series of animated films for New York's pioneering Vitagraph Company. Later that year, Blackton also experimented with the stop-motion technique—in which objects are photographed, then repositioned and photographed again—for his short film Haunted Hotel. In France, Emile Cohl was developing a form of animation similar to Blackton’s, though Cohl used relatively crude stick figures rather than Blackton’s ambitious newspaper-style cartoons. Coinciding with the rise in popularity of the Sunday comic sections of the new tabloid newspapers, the ‘Animation | History, Movies, Television, & Facts | Britannica See J. Stuart Blackton's animated movie "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces” Humorous Phases of Funny B.tmore) See all videos for this article animation industry recruited the talents of many of the best-known artists, including Rube Goldberg, Bud Fisher (creator of Mutt and Jeff) and George Herriman (creator of Krazy Kat), but most soon tired of the fatiguing animation process and left the actual production work to others. The one great exception among these early illustrators-turned- animators was Winsor McCay, whose elegant, surreal Little Nemo in ‘Slumberland and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend remain pinnacles of comic-strip art. McCay created a hand-colored short film of Little ‘Nemo for use during his vaudeville act in 1911, but it was Gertie the Dinosaur, created for MeCay’s 1914 tour, that transformed the art. McCay’s superb draftsmanship, fluid sense of movement, and great feeling for character gave viewers an animated creature who seemed to have a personality, a presence, and a life of her own. The first cartoon star had been born. Pop Culture Quiz McCay made several other extraordinary films, including a re-creation of The. ‘Take a look at a video clip from Winsor Mecay's "Gertie on Tour” Video clips from ‘Winsor MeCay’s Gertie on Tour (192) See ll videos for ths article inking of the Lusitania (1918), but it was left to Pat Sullivan to extend McCay’s discoveries. An Australian-born cartoonist who opened a studio in New York Ci ¥y, Sullivan recognized the great talent of a young animator named Otto Messmer, one of whose casually invented characters—a wily black cat named Felix—was made into the star of a series of immensely popular one-reelers. Designed by Messmer for maximum flexibility and facial expressiveness, the round-headed, big-eyed Felix quickly became the standard model for cartoon characters: a rubber ball on legs who required a minimum of effort to draw and could be kept in constant motion. Walt Disney ‘This lesson did not go unremarked by the young Walt Disney, then working at his Laugh-O-gram Films studio in Kansas City, Missouri, His first major character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, was a straightforward appropriation of Felix; when he lost the rights to the character in a dispute with his distributor, Disney simply modified Oswald's ears and produced Mickey Mouse. tips twwcbitannica.convar’animation 77H. ‘Steamboat Willie, 1928 The animated ‘Steamboat Wille (1928) was the first Mickey ‘Mose film to inclide sound, 2181410712025, 19:04 ‘Animation | History, Movies, Television, & Facts | Britannica =) Far more revolutionary was Disney's decision to create a cartoon with the novelty of synchronized sound. ‘Steamboat Willie (1928), Mickey's third film, took the country by storm. A missing element—sound—had been added to animation, making the illusion of life that much more complete, that much more magical. Later, Disney would add carefully synchronized music (The Skeleton Dance, 1929), three-strip Technicolor (Flowers and Trees, 1932), and the illusion of depth with his multiplane camera (The Old Mill, 1937). With each step, Disney seemed to come closer to a perfect naturalism, a painterly realism that suggested academic paintings of the 19th century. Disney’s resident technical wizard was Ub Iwerks, a childhood friend who followed Disney to Hollywood and was instrumental in the creation of the multiplane camera and the synchronization techniques that made the Mickey Mouse cartoons and the Silly Symphonies series seem so {and fully dimensional See ll videos for ths article For Disney, the final step was, of course, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Although not the first animated feature, it was the first to use up-to-the-minute techniques and the first to receive a wide, Hollywood-style release. Instead of amusing his audience with talking mice and singing cows, Disney was determined to give them as profound a dramatic experience as the medium would allow; he reached into his own troubled childhood to interpret this rich fable of parental abandonment, sibling rivalry, and the onrush of adult passion, ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs lobby card Lobby eard for the 1937 motion picture ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs With his increasing insistence on photographic realism in films such as Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1942), and Bambi (1942), Disney perversely seemed to be trying to put himself out of business by imitating life too well. That was not the temptation followed by Disney’s chief rivals in the 1930s, all of whom came to specialize in their own kind of stylized hem. Fantasia A lobby card featuring a scone from the "The Sorcerer's Appreatice” segment in Fantasia (1940). The Fleischer brothers ‘Max and Dave Fleischer had become successful New York City. The Fleischers invented the rotoscoping process, still in use today, in which a strip of live-action footage can be traced and redrawn as a cartoon. The Fleischers exploited this technique in their pioneering series Out of the Inkwell (1919-29). It was this series, with its lively interaction between human and drawn figures, that, Disney struggled to imitate with his early Alice cartoons. ;nimators while Disney was still living in Kansas But if Disney was Mother Goose and Norman Rockwell, the Fleischers (Max produced, Dave directed) were stride piano and red whiskey. Their extremely urban, overcrowded, sexually suggestive, and frequently nightmarish work—featuring the curvaceous torch singer Betty Boop and her two oddly infantile colleagues, tips twwcbitannica.convar’animation sia‘aio12028, 19:04 ‘Animation | History, Movies, Television, & Facs | Britannica Bimbo the Dog and Koko the Clown—charts a twisty route through the American sul and ’3os, before collapsing into Disneyesque cuteness with the features Gulliver’s Travels (1939) and Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941; also released as Hoppity Goes to Town). The studio's mainstay remained the relatively impersonal Popeye series, based on the comic strip created by Elzie Segar. The spinach-loving sailor was introduced as a supporting player in the Betty Boop cartoon Popeye the Sailor (1933) and quickly ascended to stardom, surviving through 105 episodes until the 1942 short Baby Wants a Bottleship, when the Fleischer studio collapsed and rights to the character passed to Famous Studios. “Termite Terrace” Less edgy than the Fleischers but every bit as anarchic were the animations produced by the Warner Bros. cartoon studio, known to its residents as “Termite Terrace.” The studio was founded by three Disney veterans, Rudolph Ising, Hugh Harmon, and Eriz Freleng, but didn’t discover its identity until Tex Avery, fleeing the Walter Lantz studio at Universal, joined the team as a director. Avery was young and irreverent, and he quickly recognized the talent of staff artists such as Chuck Jones, Bob Clampett, and Bob Cannon. ‘Together they brought a new kind of speed and snappiness to the ‘Warners product, beginning with Gold Diggers of 49 (1936). With the addition of director Frank Tashlin, musical director Carl W. Stalling, and voice interpreter Mel Blane, the ‘team was in place to create a new kind of cartoon character: cynical, wisecracking, and often violent, who, refined through a series of cartoons, finally emerged as Bugs Bunny in Tex Avery's A Wild Hare (1940). Other characters, some invented and some reinterpreted, arrived, including Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety and Sylvester, Pepe LePew, Foghorn Leghorn, Road Runner, and Wile E, Coyote. Avery left Warner Brothers and in 1942 joined Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's moribund animation unit, where, if anything, his work became even wilder in films such as Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) and Bad Luck Blackie (1949). See ll videos for ths article tips twwcbitannica.convar’animation ala