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Chinese magic lantern
The most widely accepted theory is that Christiaan Huygens developed the original device in the late 1650s. The magic lantern has a concave mirror in front of a light source that gathers light and projects it through a slide with an image scanned onto it. The light rays cross an aperture and hit a lens. The lens throws an enlarged picture of the original image from the slide onto a screen. -
Thaumatrope
This was invented in Victorian times as a toy for kids. The Thaumatrope was a small disc of card attached at oppressive ends are strands of string. On each side of the card is a picture, when the string is twirled between the fingers quickly the two images appear to be one. The credit of the inventor is debated, most believe it to be either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget. In the Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow a Thaumatrope is seen. -
Phenakistoscope
This was an early animational device which used persistance of vision principle to create an ilusion of something being animated. The first of these was invented by Joseph Plateau in 1829. The Phenakistoscope was a rotating disc with a series of drawings around the side in frames. When spun this creates the illusion of movement. http://decky.posterous.com/history-of-2d-animation -
Zoetrope
Zoetrope was invented by William George in 1834. This is a device that produces an illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures. Zeotrope transalted from Greek would mean "active turn" or "wheel of life". The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, you look through the slits at the pictures. -
Flip book (kineograph)
A Flip book is a series of pictures in a small book. Each picture is a frame and when the book is flicked from page to page it can make a short animation. The first Flip book is believed to be from 1868. Flip Books are often used in as children's books but some animators use them as a form of art work. The first flip book appeared in September, 1868, when it was patented by John Barnes Linnett. -
Praxinoscope
In 1877 the Praxinoscope was invented by Charles-Émile Reynaud. It was considered a successor to the Zoetrope. Like the Zoetrope, the Praxinoscope has a circular shape but instead of slits around the sides it has inner circles of mirrors, this makes the picture appear more stable as the wheel spins. The viewer looks in to the mirrors and would see an illusion of motion. -
Zoopraxiscope
Muybridge invented the Zoopraxiscope in 1879. This device was an early way of displaying motion pictures, it projected images from rotating glass discs in rapid succession. The images were originally painted on the glass but from 1892 they were improved by using outline drawings printed onto the discs photographically. -
Kinetoscope
IN 1889 Thomas Edison has invented the latest adition to the moving image devices. The way this works is when a person looks though a peep hole at the top, they are able to see the moving images within. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video, by creating the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a hig -
Vitascope
Vitascope is an early film projector which was debuted in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. It was modified to Jenkins patented "Phantoscope", which cast images via film & electric light onto a wall or screen. -
Rotoscoping 1
Rotoscoping is the technique of tracing over live-action film frame by frame. It was invented by Max Fleischer in the early 20th century. Originally they used large transparent easel were as nowadays Live footage can be imported into many animation software programmes like Adobe Flash and simply drawn a layer above, then the clip is removed after.
The animators had to trace over the footage frame by frame, for use in live action and animated films. -
Rotoscoping 2
Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background. -
Walt Disney
In 1934 Disney started making its first animated feature film, taking 3 years to make Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1937. On its release It became the highest grossing film of all time, a title it would keep for many years. Using the profits Disney bought a new studio. Disney continues to release films the latest being Toy Story 3 (co-produced with Pixar). -
Walt Disney
In 1923 two brothers Walt and Roy Disney founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio and changed the name to Walt Disney Productions in 1929 before finally settling on its current name The Walt Disney Company in 1986, today Disney is one of the most recognisable name in the animation industry. In 1928 they made the first ever Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy. -
Storyboards and animatics
Storyboards are used as part of the pre-production of animations. They consist of a series of small rectangular boxes in rows. In each rectangle is drawn, by a Storyboard artist, a section of the animation with a short annotation underneath it stating what is happening at this point in the animation. The next rectangle will then show what happens next, an arm moves for example. Again this would be with annotation. Storyboards are used to help show how the animation will look. -
Storyboards and animatics
The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at the Walt Disney Studio during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios. -
Drawn on Film animation
Drawn-on-film animation, also known as direct animation or animation without camera, is an animation technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on film stock, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects are photographed frame by frame with an animation camera. One of the first animators to use Direct Animation was Norman McLaren who used it in his first animation, Seven Till Five. -
Cell Animation
Cel Animation (also called Traditional Animation or Hand-Drawn Animation) was a technique used in alot of animations in the 20th century. Cel Animation uses layers of Acetate (originally Celluloid, hence Cel Animation) because of this you can keep some of the frame static on one frame (background for example) and one drawing moving on a layer above the first (character). -
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is an animation software programme. It is used quite widely because it is simple to use. Flash Animations use Tweens (moving object from one position to another) to move objects on layers similar to Cel Animation. Most Flash Animations have a cartoony look to them. Flash Animations are usually distributed by the internet. Websites such as Newgrounds.com have large archives of Flash Animations deposited by people from all over the world. Flash Animation Authors include David Firth.
