The History of Animation

The history of animation started long before the development of cinematography. Humans have probably attempted to depict motion as far back as the paleolithic period. Shadow play and the magic lantern offered popular shows with moving images as the result of manipulation by hand and/or some minor mechanics. In 1833 the phenakistiscope introduced the stroboscopic principle of modern animation, which would also provide the basis for the zoetrope (1866), the flip book (1868), the praxinoscope (1877) and cinematography.

Charles-Émile Reynaud further developed his projection praxinoscope into the Théâtre Optique with transparent hand-painted colorful pictures in a long perforated strip wound between two spools, patented in December 1888. From 28 October 1892 to March 1900 Reynaud gave over 12,800 shows to a total of over 500.000 visitors at the Musée Grévin in Paris. His Pantomimes Lumineusesseries of animated films each contained 300 to 700 frames that were manipulated back and forth to last 10 to 15 minutes per film. Piano music, song and some dialogue were performed live, while some sound effects were synchronized with an electromagnet.

When film became a common medium some manufacturers of optical toys adapted small magic lanterns into toy film projectors for short loops of film. By 1902 they were producing many chromolithography film loops, usually by tracing live-action film footage (much like the later rotoscoping technique).

Some early filmmakers, including J. Stuart Blackton, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, Segundo de Chomón and Edwin S. Porter experimented with stop-motion animation, possibly since around 1899. Blackton's The Haunted Hotel (1907) was the first huge success that baffled audiences with objects apparently moving by themselves and inspired other filmmakers to try the technique for themselves.

J. Stuart Blackton also experimented with animation drawn on blackboards and some cutout animation in Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906).

In 1908 Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie was released with a white-on-black chalkline look created with negative prints from black ink drawings on white paper.The film largely consists of a stick figure moving about and encountering all kinds of morphing objects, including a wine bottle that transforms into a flower.

Inspired by Émile Cohl's stop-motion film Les allumettes animées [Animated Matches] (1908), Ladislas Starevich started making his influential puppet animations in 1910.

Winsor McCay's Little Nemo (1911) showcased very detailed drawings. His Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) was an also an early example of character development in drawn animation.

📷Charlie in Turkey (1916), an animated film by Pat Sullivan for Keen Cartoon Corporation.

During the 1910s, the production of animated short films typically referred to as "cartoons", became an industry of its own and cartoon shorts were produced for showing in movie theaters. The most successful producer at the time was John Randolph Bray, who, along with animator Earl Hurd, patented the cel animation process that dominated the animation industry for the rest of the decade.

El Apóstol (Spanish: "The Apostle") was a 1917 Argentine animated film utilizing cutout animation, and the world's first animated feature film. Unfortunately, a fire that destroyed producer Federico Valle's film studio incinerated the only known copy of El Apóstol, and it is now considered a lost film.

The earliest extant feature length animated film is The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) made by director Lotte Reiniger and her collaborators Carl Koch and Berthold Bartosch.

In 1932, the first short animated film created entirely with Technicolor (using red/green/blue photographic filters and three strips of film) was Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees, directed by Burt Gillett. But, the first feature film that was done with this technique, apart from the movie The Vanities Fair (1935), by Rouben Mamoulian, was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", also by Walt Disney.

In 1958, Hanna-Barbera released The Huckleberry Hound Show, the first half hour television program to feature only in animation. Terrytoons released Tom Terrific that same year. Television significantly decreased public attention to the animated shorts being shown in theaters.

Computer animation has become popular since Toy Story (1995), the first feature-length animated film completely made using this technique.

In 2008, the animation market was worth US$68.4 billion. Animation as an art and industry continues to thrive as of the mid-2010s because well-made animated projects can find audiences across borders and in all four quadrants. Animated feature-length films returned the highest gross margins (around 52%) of all film genres in the 2004–2013 timeframe.