History of Animation

History of Animation

Praxinoscope
The Praxinoscope, is a strip of pictures placed on a circular material of a spinning cylinder. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Emile Reynaud. The Praxinoscope was an improvement of the zoetrope which used slits to see the animation. When a person looked through the larger hole of the praxinoscope whilst it was being spun, an animation was displayed on the mirrors of the moving images.

Thaumatrope
The Thaumatrope was invented in 1825, by John Ayrton. It is a disc with an image on either side with a piece of string either side to spin it with. When the image is spun with the string at a certain speed, the two images are combined. For example a bird and a cage.

Zoetrope
The Zoetrope was invented by William George Horner in 1834. It is a cylinder with a strip of images along the side, which is spun to make the images look as though they are moving, for example a person running, or someone on a galloping horse. There are slits around the cylinder to look through to see the motion of the images.

Phenakistoscope
The Phenakistoscope was invented by Joseph Plateau in 1832. It is a large or small wheel of images with a stick as a handle at the bottom to hold whilst the wheel is spinning. When spun the images move to create the affect the for example someone is jumping up and down.

George Pal:

George Pal was born on the 1st of February, 1908, in Cegled, Austria. He was highly developed in drawing skills and although there were no opportunities for an architect when he left university, he began working at Hunnia Films in Budapest. He created titles for silent movies, and learned about motion picture animation.

In 1931-1932, George Pal also worked at UFA Studios which was in Berlin, and was the head of the cartoon department. He started taking a liking into animating inanimate objects, which led to his stop-motion photography.
He was most famous for his Puppetoons films, including;

- The Ship of the Ether

- The Time Machine

- War of the Worlds

- The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao
- The Power

- Doc Savage
- Tulips Shall Grow

Willis O'Brien:

Willis O'Brien was born on March 2nd, 1886 in Oakland, California. When he was a teenager he thought of himself to be a boxer, however started writing stories and took on the path of film making and animating.

In 1933 he began working on the animation of King Kong, and 16 years later in 1949 he became the he head technician, and started to work on the animation of Mighty Joe Young. These were also the two animations he was most famous for producing. He also made;

- Creation

- War Eagles

- Gwangi

- Valley of the Mist

However, these animations were never made and published.

Ray Harryhausen:

Ray Harryhausen was born on the 29th of June in 1920, in Los Angeles. After seeing George Pal's King Kong, at 13 years old he started researching film effects and stop-motion photography. After World War 2 he started working with Willis O'Brien and started working on animations with him.

Harryhausen became most famous for his 'The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms' film in 1953, after he was hired by Warner Bros. He is now famously known for his stop-motion special effects in fantasy films.

Phil Tippett:

Phil Tippett was born on September 27th, 1951 in Berkeley California. When he was a child he was inspired by Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and King Kong by Willis O'Brien. He then got a Fine Arts degree from the University of California.

He started to help create effects and stop-motion for films, and his most famous work from doing so was The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. When he left ILM and created Tippett Studio, he created his own stop motion animations,including Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Willow, Dinosaur!, and the Robocop Trilogy.

Otmar Gutmann:

Otmar Gutmann was born on the 24th of April, 1937 in Schwarzwald, Germany. He is a German TV producer, and is famously known for creating the children's TV series Pingu.

Tim Burton and Henry Selick:

Tim Burton was born on August 25th, 1958 in Burbank California, and Henry Selick was born November 30th, 1952 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

Tim Burton is known for his gothic and dark films and worked closely with actor Johnny Depp. These are films he is most famous for;

- Beetlejuice

- Edward Scissorhands

-The Nightmare Before Christmas

-Ed Wood

-Sleepy Hollow

- Corpse Bride

- Dark Shadows

- Sweeney Todd, and many more.

Henry Selick is a director and writer and produced the films Coraline and James and the Giant Peach. He also helped Tim Burton in the making of The Nightmare Before Christmas. He had a fascination with animation at a young age, and started drawing from the ages of 3. He later enrolled at CalArts to study animation.

Adam Shaheen:

Adam Shaheen was born on the 13th of October, 1964 in London, England. He is a television producer, and is also the owner of Cuppa Coffee Studios. He has produced in shows such as, Jo Jo's Circus, The Wrong Cast, Celebrity Deathmatch, Little People and Starveillance. He has produced over 400 commercials, and worked with big companies such as Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney, Warner Bros, MTV and many more. Due to this, he has also won 150 international awards.

The Brothers Quay:

Stephen and Timothy Quay are identical twins born on June 17th, 1947 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. They are both stop-motion animators, and are well known for their play 'The Chairs'.

They both studied at the Royal College of Art in London, and after they left university they began to make films. Their most famously known work, is Street of Crocodiles, and they have also worked with the BBC and contributed in their films.

Nick Park:

Nicholas Park was born December 6th, 1958 in Preston, Lancashire. His first stop motion was made at the age of 13 years old, after he joined Aardman Animations. As a child he loved to draw and took after his father, who was an amateur inventor. He then studied art at Sheffield City Polytechnic.

His most famous animation he made was Wallace and Gromit, however he also created Chicken Run and The Wrong Trousers. He made these animations out of clay models, and the originals cost $20,000 to replace when they got lost.

Stop Motion Animation:

TV Programme - Aimed at younger children

Feature Film -  Aimed at younger children

Advertisement - Aimed at ages 14+

Music Video - Aimed at ages 16+

Ident (Channel Indent) - Aimed at ages 16+

Conclusion:

I think that stop-motion animation is made to give a different effect on animations and films, and to make impossible things possible. For example stop-motion animations move differently to other animations.

I also think that in the future we will keep stop-motion animation rather than replace it with computer animation, because stop-motion has been around for too long and has been used in some of the best films and animations ever made. It also gives a different effect to what computer animation does.