HISTORY OF ANIMATION

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THE GROUND WORK
Animation did not happen instantly. Many people contributed to
make animation what it is today. In 1824, Peter Roget discovered
the vital principle,’ the persistence of vision.' This principle rest on
the fact that our eyes temporarily retain the image of anything
they've just scene. If this wasn’t so, we would never get the illusion
of an unbroken connection in a series of images, and neither movies nor animation would be possible. Many people don't realize that movies don't actually move, and that they are still images that appear to move when they are projected in a series. This principle was quickly adapted to develop a series of gadgets, such as the Zoetrope and phenakitstoscope.

The Phenakistoscope: Two discs mounted on a shaft-the front disc has slits around the edge and the rear disc has a sequence of drawings. Align the drawings with the slits, look through the openings and as the discs revolve we have the illusion of motion.
The wheel of life' or the Zeotrope: Appeared in the USA in 1867 and was sold as a toy. Long strips of paper with a sequence of drawings on them were inserted into a cylinder with slits in it. Spin the cylinder, look through the slits and the creature appears to move.
The flipper book: In 1868 a novelty called 'the flipper book' appeared worldwide and it remained the simplest and the most popular device. It’s just a pad of drawing bound like a book along one edge. Hold the book in one hand along the bound edge and with the other hand flip the pages and see them move.

Today the classical animator still flips his drawing the same way as a flipper book before testing it on the video or film camera.

BIRTH OF ANIMATION AS AN ARTFORM
The illustration medium was obviously the first choice for creating these sequences depicting movement. In 1906, J.Stuart Blackton made the first animated film called 'humorous phases of funny faces'. Following this in 1908,Winsor Mc Cay produced an animation sequence using his comic strip character 'Little Nemo' and followed it up with a cartoon called 'Gertie the Trained Dinosaur. He was the first man to present animation as an art form. Credited frequently as the father of animation industry, during the period between 1911 and 1921,McCay nursed animation from a simple camera trick to a full -blown character animation that would take 20 years to be surpassed. Mc cay animated his films single handedly. From inception to execution each cartoon was his and his alone.
Though he extensively influenced the development of animation as a new art form, the medium was in serious need of technological up gradation, which was essential to free the medium from the total dependence on brilliant individuals and to ensure large volume output.

CELLOPHANE ANIMATION
Almost all earlier attempts in animation were a series of images drawn on paper. In the initial stages, animation was done by directly photographing images from paper. This restricted the use of backgrounds since it was to be drawn along with the characters on the same sheet of paper. In late1914,Bray animation studio employee, Earl Hurd invented the process of inking the animator's drawing onto transparent pieces of celluloid and then photographing them in succession over a single painted background.
The highly labour intensive nature of animation was proving to be a serious deterrent to large quantity output. Naturally, animation adapted itself to an industrial framework. The art of animation was no longer the work of one man : it was a streamlined, assembly-line process in the best Henry Ford tradition. Even before Mc Cay had shown the world the true potential of the animated cartoon, the first animation studios were already around, trying to exploit the medium for what they could. This transformation of animation from a fine art to an industry has had serious repercussions on both the quality and quantity of output. On the positive side animation became highly popular through the huge quantity output and exposure. This opened up a whole range of production options and segregation of the talent base into specialize categories such as background artist, key animator, in-betweeners, cleanup artists, ink & paint artists, etc.

THE GOLDEN AGE (THE DISNEY ERA), 1930-1940

In the twenties Felix the cat became as popular as Charlie Chaplin. These short Felix cartoons were visually inventive, doing what a camera can’t do. The Felix cartoon led straight to the arrival of Walt Disney. The most influential studio, both from an artistic as well as a commercial standpoint, in the history of animation is the Walt Disney studio. In 1923, Walt Disney entered the animation industry with the film “Alice’s Wonderland”. In 1928, Mickey Mouse took off with his appearance in Steamboat Willie- the first cartoon with synchronized sound track and Disney continues to dominate the field to this very day. It is at Disney that we see the studio system’s best effects on the development of animation as an art form. Walt was the one who steered cartoons away from the ‘rubber hose style of the silent era and encouraged his artists to develop a realistic, naturalistic style of animation in the early 1930’s. He was the moving force behind such ground breaking films such as ‘Snow white and the seven Dwarfs” (1937), the first full length animated feature and “Pinocchio” (1940), a film who’s intricate levels of technical brilliance many animators feel has never been surpassed. Disney came out with a series of releases including films such as ‘Lady and the tramp’, ‘The jungle book’, and the experimental film ‘Fantasia’ each surpassing the predecessor in quality and finesse. Warner’s artists used their creative freedom to take the medium in new directions. Directors Tex Avery and Bob Clampett broke from the Disney tradition and imbibed their films with highly exaggerated slapstick comedy.

THE TELEVISION ERA

     It was when animation finally made the leap to television that the art truly began to suffer for business sake. Though television brought animation to the homes, its voracious requirement of quantity started affecting the industry adversely. People genuinely interested in making quality cinema had manned the great Hollywood studios of the thirties, forties and fifties. The denizens of the TV animation houses of the sixties, seventies and eighties only cared that the product was there to the market. The quality of the writing was poor and the animation itself was so limited, that it barely qualified as animation at all. A crop of studios including Hanna-Barbara, Filmation and DIC came into being to cater to this huge market.
Desperate to conquer as much airtime as possible, the studios churned out series after series without any regard to aesthetic. The budget restraints and hurried deadlines of the television industry simply prohibited artists from crafting the kind of art their cinematic predecessors achieved.

    Back on the big screen, the medium faced a different set of problems. Since the advent of television, people were no longer spending all day at movies and short duration films were gradually loosing appeal among audience. While animation never completely disappeared from theaters, by the 1960’s most studios has closed down. The once that didn’t, suffered from severe declines in quality. Only Disney retained it’s level of short films by the mid-fifties, earlier than anyone else.