History of Animation

In this module, a lecture I found interesting was about the history of animation. We looked at different techniques used in animation and how its progressed over the years.

The zoetrope, and old 2D animation process was one of the techniques used. This is animation in its purest from and only capable of making short loops. This can also be produced in 3D, I found the DisneyWorld 3D animation by Pixar very impressive as the flashing lights makes you able to see the animation clearly.

Another technique that I looked at is Rotoscoping, which is a process that traces live action. It was first used, hand drawn, in 1915 by Max Fleisher. Rotoscoping is very hard to create life like, stable and slow movement, and is always very jumpy. Koko the Clown was the first ever rotoscope, and the process was popularly used in Snow White.

We also looked at a Cel animation, Gertie the Dinosaur, 1914. This technique produces a more fluid animation, which was very basic but smoother. This animation just basically showed us what they can do. There is no story to the animation, as it just shows the movements of the dinosaur.

An interesting animation that we looked at was by Emile Cohl, 1908, which was one of the first ever animations created. This is a anti realist animation which shows a very chaotic scenario. You can't really tell what happens as you can't see a narrative, and looks like scenes warping into other scenes.