1. Week 1: Origins of Animation
Various shorts

2. 1820s – 1920s
Invention of the moving image
Evolution of animation from spectacle/novelty attraction to narrative form
Evolution of animation production from individual experimenters and inventers to studio-based mass production
Evolution of animation from novelty, ‘variety’ item to part of the regular film bill
Most of this happened between 1900 & 1915

6. Proto-animation
Once thought to be dependent on the persistence of vision
Thaumatrope (John Paris ~ 1824)

7. Phenakistiscope (Joseph Plateau, early 1830s)

8. Zoetrope (William Horner, 1834)

9. Flipbook

10. Zoopraxiscope (Eadward Muybridge, 1879)
Studying animal motion

12. Praxinoscope (Emile Reynaud, 1877)
… first theatrical projections of moving images

13. Emile Reynaud’s Optical Theatre (1892)

14. George Méliès Trick films Special effects over plot
A Trip to the Moon (1904)
‘Rediscovered’ in 1929

15. James Stuart Blackton Lightening sketches and trick films
‘Discovered’ animation by mistake
Notable films:
Enchanted Drawing (1900)
Humorous Phases of Funny Face (1904)
Haunted Hotel (1907)

16. The Enchanted Drawing (1900)

17. Humorous Phases of Funny Face (1904)

18. The Haunted Hotel (1907)

19. Themes in Early Animation
Lack of narrative
Supernatural and scientific
Popular culture (mass culture)
Magician type present
Trick photography

20. Paul Ward ‘Defining “Animation”: The Animated Film and the Emergence of the Film Bill’
Positioned animation in the first decades of cinema’s existence
Shifts in production, distribution and exhibition
variety, novelty
Film bill- feature narrative films
Standardisation of animation- cel technology

21. Emile Cohl Haunted Hotel- inspiration
Only 40 or so of his 200+ films survive
Invented ‘language of cinema’
Metamorphosis
Foregrounded drawings

22. Phantasmagorie (1908)

23. Windsor McKay
Began as a newspaper cartoonists (‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’)
First film based on ‘Little Nemo’- 4,000 drawings
Gertie (1914)- 10,000 drawings

24. John Barré
Introduced standard perforations in drawing paper- sheets stacked on fixed pins (‘perf and peg’ system)
Slash system- drawing backgrounds only once, leaving gaps for moving elements

25. John Randolph Bray Division of labour- system of production
Three technical developments:
Printed backgrounds
Creating shadows on drawings
Cel animation
Colonised talent (Hurd, Max Fleischer)