The History of Animation

Despite the fact that we're constantly surrounded by animations on TV, in advertisements, on apps etc - the history of animation goes way back to before even computers were in existence.

It all started with the suggestion of movement...

30,000 BC

Back in 30,000 BC, there were no examples of moving images - however artifacts such as this bowl - with several paintings of a leaping goat, imply the movement in the picture.

15,000 AD

In this time era there was still no evidence of what we call animation today. Leonardo DiVinci's 'Vitruvian Man' however, was a prime example of depicting movement within a still image.

The layers within in the still image that portray movement in the human body, offer enough to the imagination to represent movement.

Flashing forward to the 16th Century, devices that allowed the movement between images to be seen started to be designed and produced.

1603

The Magic Lantern was one of the first ever devices to be designed and produced for the purpose of animation. It was designed with two projector-like screens that intermittently showed images.

1824

The thaumatrope was invented over two years later. It comprised of a disk witch a few seperate images on that come together as one when the disk flipped.

1831

A phenakitoscope is comparable to a thaumatrope as it is also formed with a disk, however, the disk is spun and not flipped, allowing more images to be shown and therefore a more fluid motion.

1834

3 years later the phenakitoscope was developed into a zoetrope. The disk no longer had to be spun manually as a device that spun the disk at an accurate speed was developed to spin the disk itself..

1868

30 years later the flipbook was introduced - this comprised of multiple images on seperate pieces of paper that when the papers are flipped through - portray a moving picture.

In the 1900s, silent films began to be shown. One of the first animated silent films was produced by Emile Cohl, who hand drew Fantasmagorie.

These silent films continued to develop throughout time, until 1928 when the quintessential 'Steamboat Willie' was produced by Walt Disney.

From this moment forward, the progression of hand drawn animation - to painted animation - such as Walt Disney's early Snow White - the first animated feature length film which entiltled him to an Oscar.

From here, animations were used on TV as entertainment, and were developed from from hand-drawn, to digitally drawn and then even further advanced to CGI- which is predominantly used in films and tv today to give a more '3D' effect to our animations.

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