Early American Animated Film

What is an animated film?

Animation Technique An animated film is one that is created frame by frame. Newspaper comic strips were the predecessor of animated cartoons. Thousands of years ago, animation was seen very early in cave drawings to portray the caveman’s method of trapping prey. For example, it would show bison running along and falling into a pit. Or in Greece, acrobats were shown in motion on vases. Today, to make his or her drawings move, an artist has to produce 24 drawings for every second of on-screen time, corresponding to twenty- four pictures (or frames) per second of sound movie camera or projector. Because of production costs, animation was forced out of the entertainment or creative field and into advertising.

Describe what you see in this picture. Where and when would you hypothesize it’s making?

How can a drawing turn into an Animated Film?

What makes these different? Happy Hooligan Makes a Grand Hit! Published June 18, India ink and watercolor over graphite underdrawing. Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature Prints and Photographs Division Little Nemo in slumberland. "Hey! What's goin' on here?" McCay, Winsor, artist ( 1908 Nov. 22 [publication date] ) ( Photograph, Print, Drawing ) Prints and Photographs Online Catalog

Earliest surviving example of an animated film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) by newspaper cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton, one of the co-founders of the Vitagraph Company. It was the first cartoon to use the single frame method, and was projected at 20 frames per second. In the film, a cartoonist's line drawings of two faces were 'animated' (or came to life) on a blackboard. The two faces smiled and winked, and the cigar-smoking man blew smoke in the lady's face; also, a circus clown led a small dog to jump through a hoop.

The Artists Who Started It All: From Drawings To Film

Silent Era Black and white silent films usually ran about seven minutes long. Some offered character dialogue as on-screen words in “titles” or “speech balloons”. Relied on physical humor or pantomime to carry the film.

Winsor McCay ( ) Gertie The Dinosaur (1914) What

Gertie The Dinosaur (1914)

Sound Is Added Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie (1928)was the first Mickey Mouse release and also a critical film for the animation industry in its transition from silence to sound. From this point on, Disney and his animators moved from simple and primitive to sophisticated and more complex animations, creating a fantasy world and eventually adding color. Max Fleischer was also a prominent director that incorporated the early use of sound into his animations such as Betty Boop, Popeye, and later Superman.

Walt Disney

Max Fleischer

The Making of a Flip Book To make an 8-minute cartoon with drawings, you would need: 7,000 sheets of paper or 7,000 sheets of celluloid, 150 sheets of cardboard on which to paint backgrounds, 50 felt-tip pens, 10 quill pens, 50 pencils, five erasers, 20 brushes, 2.5 gallons of paint, 1/2 pint of ink, 3,600 feet of black-and-white film to film the preliminary "pencil test", 720 feet of color film to film the final cartoon. You also need a staff of writers to write a script; artists and animators; a director (just like you do for a movie); voice actors to play the various roles; musicians; sound and camera equipment; and a great deal of time and energy!

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