The History of Animation

The history of animation is a broad enough topic to be its own book, but it all boils down to those perceptive people who discovered that if you flip quickly through several similar images that have only small changes between each one, the resulting objects seem to come alive.

The historical discussion then turns to a number of interesting technical machines that make the process of flipping through frames easy and consistent. These early machines included odd-named wonders like the Magic Lantern, the Thaumatrope, the Zoetrope, the Praxinoscope, Thomas Edison’s Kinetscope, and Louis Lumiere’s Cinematograph. With these machines came an interest and a curiosity that took animation from novelty to a viable commercial form of entertainment.

One of the first animated pieces was Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by James Stuart Blackton in 1906. Other early animation films included Fantasmagorie (France) in 1908, The Beautiful Lukanida (Russia) in 1912, El Apostol (Argentina) in 1917, Adventures of Prince Achmed (Germany) in 1926, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

Early animation works included the works of Winsor McCay (Gertie the Dinosaur), Max Fleischer (Koko the Clown), Earl Hurd (Bobby Bumps), Otto Messmer (Felix the Cat), and John Bray (Col. Heeza Liar) in the 1920s. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Disney studios were introducing the world to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Silly Symphonies; Fleischer Studios were animating Betty Boop and Popeye; Walter Lantz was animating Woody Woodpecker; and the teams at Warner Bros. including Tex Avery, Friz Freleng, and Chuck Jones were releasing Looney Tunes shorts starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and their friends. Tex Avery later moved on to do animations for MGM.

In the mid-1950s, cartoons moved to the television market with the help of Hanna-Barbera Productions, which produced the first animated television series. Other notable series included Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, and The Jetsons.

Another popular form of animation was created using stop-motion techniques. This involved moving clay models slightly for each frame of the animation. This type of animation was used in the 1933 version of King Kong and was mastered by Ray Harryhausen for such films as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans. Stop-motion animation is still alive and doing well thanks to Nick Park and Aardman Studios with their Wallace and Gromit characters and by Tim Burton on his Nightmare Before Christmas feature.

Traditional animation was accomplished by hand-drawing individual frames, but in the later 1980s, computers were being used to produce animation sequences. Advances in both software and hardware led to Pixar’s 1995 release of Toy Story, the first feature-length computer-generated film. Today, most animated features are produced using computers.

While each animation studio developed its own unique style, many of the commercially viable animated forms were cartoons developed for younger audiences. As animated television series became more and more popular in the late 1960s and 1970s, most series were aired on Saturday mornings, an off-peak time slot that catered to children. But a different story was happening in other parts of the world. Japan, for instance, was embracing a new, unique, and edgy style (also developed in Japan) that was geared more for adult audiences. This genre is called anime.