Amal's blog

Friday 16 September 2011

B:The History of Animation

Early Animation:


Throughout history, people have employed various attempts to give the impression of moving pictures. Paleolithic and cave drawings represent animals with their legs overlapping so that they appeared to be running. 

A 5,000 year old earthen bowl found in Iran and it has five images of a goat leaping up to nip at a tree, painted along the sides. This has been claimed to be an example of early animation. These would be seen as an 'animation' if the bowl was to be turned quickly.

An Egyptian burial chamber mural, approximately 4000 years old, showing wrestlers in action.


Drawn with complexity while performing their moves on each other. Although it did not depict images in motion, as we know of animation today, the images surely had intentions of showing the wrestlers perform their match. Although this may seem similar to a series of animation drawings, there was no way of viewing the images in motion. It does, after all, indicate the artist's motive of depicting motion.


Many of the early inventions designed to animate images were meant as novelties for private amusement of children or small parties. Human civilizations have started to create the earliest instruments to convey animation – images played in rapid succession to convey movement. Animation devices which fall into this category include:


The zoetrope (180 AD - 1834):


The zoetrope was invented in 1834 in England by William Horner. He called it the 'Daedalum' ('the wheel of the devil). It didn't become popular until the 1860s, when it was patented by makers in both England and America. The American developer, William F. Lincoln, named his toy the 'zoetrope', which means 'wheel of life'.

The zoetrope worked on the same principles as the phenakistoscope, but the pictures were drawn on a strip which could be set around the bottom third of a metal drum, with the slits now cut in the upper section of the drum. 


The drum was mounted on a spindle so that it could be spun, and viewers looking through the slits would see the cartoon strip form a moving image. The faster the drum is spun, the smoother the image that is produced.


Magic lantern (16th Century):

The Magic Lantern is the forerunner of the modern slide projector. It has a long and complicated history and, like lots of fascinating inventions, many people where involved in its development. No one can say for sure who invented the Magic Lantern. It is part of the marvelous world of optical projection and stands alongside the Camera Obscure, Shadow Shows and the Magic Mirror. Like them the Magic Lantern has been used to educate, entertain and mystify audiences for hundreds of years.



Magic lanterns, produced from the 17th up through the early 20th centuries, were the forerunners of slide projectors, used for visual entertainment in theaters and elsewhere. Magic lanterns and the slides created for them are highly collectible today, and there's a wide variety of formats and subjects to choose from.
The light was projected through a glass lens barrel on the front of the Magic Lantern Projector. Hand painted or photographic slides were placed in the lens barrel. The light from the light source was projected through the slide, through the lens barrel and onto a screen or wall.







 


The image above is an example of Magic-Lantern Slides. The slide shows were accompanied by music and narration or "readings." Some slides were specially made in a series of progressive frames so that they could be moved through the projector quickly and give the illusion of motion.

Magic Lantern Slides can be dated back to the mid 1600s. The slides and slide shows continued to be popular into the 20th century and were the precursors of the modern slide projectors.



Magic Lantern Slides come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. From the seventeenth century different manufacturers and countries engaged in fierce competition to establish their own sizes as the "standard". Many manufacturers also invented ingenious mechanisms to create movement or animation in the projected image. check out the other different sizes of Magic-Lantern Slides. 




Thaumatrope (1824):


AThaumatrope means "wonder turner", which is a disk with a picture on each side, attached to two pieces of string. If you hold and twist the strings between your fingers and then pull them to let go, the disk will spin and the two pictures will appear as one moving image.




The invention of the thaumatrope is usually credited to either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget. Paris used one to demonstrate persistence of vision to the Royal College of Physicians in London in 1824. He based his invention on ideas of the astronomer John Herschel and the geologist William Henry Fitton, and some sources attribute the actual invention to Fitton rather than Paris. Others claim that Charles Babbage was the inventor.

Thaumatropes were one of a number of simple, mechanical optical toys that used persistence of vision. They are recognised as important antecedents of cinematography and in particular of animation.
Phenakistoscope (1831):



Although this principle had been recognized by the Greek mathematician Euclid and later in experiments by Newton, it was not until 1829 that this principle became firmly established by the Belgian Joseph Plateau. It was also invented independently in the same year by Simon von Stampfer of Vienna, Austria, who called his invention a stroboscope.  Plateau's inspiration had come primarily from the work of Michael Faraday and Peter Mark Roget (the compiler of Roget's Thesaurus).  Faraday had invented a device he called "Michael Faraday's Wheel," that consisted of two discs that spun in opposite directions from each other.  From this, Plateau took another step, adapting Faraday's wheel into a toy he later named the phenakistoscope.  




The phenakistoscope uses the persistence of motion principle to create an illusion of motion. The phenakistoscope consisted of two discs mounted on the same axis.  The first disc had slots around the edge, and the second contained drawings of successive action, drawn around the disc in concentric circles.  Unlike Faraday's Wheel, whose pair of discs spun in opposite directions, a phenakistoscope's discs spin together in the same direction.  When viewed in a mirror through the first disc's slots, the pictures on the second disc will appear to move. 
Flip Book (1868):



A flip book or flick book (or Thump Cinema the German word for Flip book) is a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings.




Flip books are essentially a primitive form of animation. Like motion pictures, they rely on persistence of vision to create the illusion that continuous motion is being seen rather than a series of discontinuous images being exchanged in succession. Rather than "reading" left to right, a viewer simply stares at the same location of the pictures in the flip book as the pages turn. The book must also be flipped with enough speed for the illusion to work, so the standard way to "read" a flip book is to hold the book with one hand and flip through its pages with the thumb of the other hand. 
The first flip book appeared in September, 1868, when it was patented by John Barnes Linnett under the name kineograph ("moving picture"). They were the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular (as in the older phenakistoscope). 


Praxinoscope (1877):


The Praxinoscope, invented in 1877 by the Frenchman, Emile Reynaud , is a precursor of the moving picture. A band of pictures, in sequence, is placed inside a rotating drum, quite similar to the arrangement of pictures in the Zoetrope. In Reynaud's design the pictures were viewed in succession by reflection from a series of narrow vertical mirrors placed at the center of the drum. The drum is spun by hand, and the pictures appears to gallop.




The number of mirrors is equal to the number of pictures, and the images of the pictures are viewed in the mirrors.  When the outer cylinder rotates, the quick succession of reflected pictures gives the illusion of a moving picture.

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