Animation; The rapid display of a sequence of images of 2D or 3D modle positions in order to create the illusion of movement.
To start, in 1834 the modern zoetrop was invented by William George Horner. The device consisted of a large spinning wheel with slits cut into it. The zoetrope would be spun round and when looking through the slots cut into it's side you perceive the still images to be moving.The outside was blank but on the inside you could see the different frames of an animation, due to the size of the zoetrope the animation wasn't long at all and looped as it was spun round meaning the design on the inside would need to seamlessly end and start again. The limitations of the zoetrope was the amount of frames you could have and so wasn't useful for created anything that didn't need to last one to two seconds.
Jumping forward Lasislaw Starewicz created a thirteen minute piece called "The cameraman's revenge". Lasislaw took dead bugs including various types of Beatles and Dragonflies, and created a stop motion film using a miniature set. Stop motion is where you have your character or object and take a picture of it. You then repeat this process but slightly move the object before each picture, the smaller the movements and the more frames the smoother the animation will be. The pictures are then made into a film and played, creating the illusion that the object is moving by itself. The process of stop motion is always long and tedious even with a computer, although Lasislaw did not have this luxury. The cameraman's revenge was produced by the Khanzhonkov company in Russia, and was released in 1912.
In the 1910's animated films started to go big, there was more interest from the public and more demand for artists. Winsor McCay made a five minute short called "Gertie the dinosaur". Like Lasislaw he used stop motion but in a slightly different way. On paper he would draw out Gertie and her surroundings then on another sheet, trace the picture but slightly change Gertie or her surroundings. As with "The cameraman's revenge" the thousands of pictures are turned into a film, more drawings equate to a smoother animation. What makes Winsor's film different is that at the end of the animation he overlays frames for a live action film he shot, creating a blend of animation and real life film. This would be the first time live action and animation has come together, and would lay the foundation for Disney's "Alice's Wonderland"
In 1923 Walt Disney released "Alice's wonderland" a much improved version of Wnsor McCay's combination of live action and hand drawn animation. The cartoon features a small girl named Alice whom is visiting Disney and she gets to see how cartoons are made. She then gets to visit a cartoon world, this is done by filming the people, and then overlaying animation on top. This gives the opposite effect to what McCay had produced with Gertie. Disney's other triumph was in 1928 with the iconic "Steam boat Willie" a seven minute black and white cartoon showing Mickey mouse preforming multiple amusing duties aboard a steamboat. This was Mickey Mouse's first appearance and the cartoon was one of the first to use sound, this was a big break through.
Moving onto the 1930s this was a time of great depression in America, many companies went bankcrup and artists had a hard time finding jobs. Disney pulled through and managed to make "The old mill" released in 1937, it focused not on a cartoon like style of the "Steam boat Willie" but on a more realistic style in both drawing and animation. The film also includes depth of field, camera zoom, realism and effects animation (Such as rain).
By the 1940's Disney and Warner Brothers were the world leaders in animation. On November 1st 1940 Disney released "Fantasia" which due to WWII did horribly at the box office, making matters worse was the fact that Walt Disney spent four times his budget on the film, making the overall spendings on the film $2.28 million, this made Disney bankcrupt. To compensate for the loss Disney was forced to take out a government contract for 32 animated shorts of anti-Nazi propaganda between 1941 and 1945. An example of this would be "Education for death" (released January 15th, 1943) which details the life of a child born while under Hitler's rule and at the same time daemonises the Nazi establishment.
1950 saw the rise of television in the UK, the animated films had to step up their game to compete with televised cartoons such as Loony Tunes. Disney released Cinderella (March 4th, 1950), Alice in Wonderland (July 28th (USA) July 26th (UK) 1951) and Peter Pan (February 5th, 1953). Another innovation in the world of animation was 2D Vector graphics, allowing animations to create smooth shapes and lines for their characters. Since the rise of television in the 50's the 1960's saw a explosion of televised cartoons such as The Flitstones (1960) Tom and Jerry (1960) Top cat (1961) The Jetsons (1962) The pink panther (1963) Scooby Doo (1969). So by this time animation was very widespread and cheap.
By the 1980s the animation world started playing around with 3D, it was used in video games which competed for entertainment with Films. Although 3D was new and expensive and was limited by simple computers, software and people whom have been trained in that field of expertise. 3D was also practised in the 70's aswell as shown by Pixar's 3D hand and face demonstration which would lay the foundation for all the video games and 3D animation to come in the 80's.
In the 90's 3D animation went big, the introduction of High tech Apple computers and Asian workers making 3D easier and less expensive. 2D on the other hand was getting much more expensive as it had to go bigger and better in order to keep up with the ever improving 3D animations. It was in 1995 that Pixar released Toy Story on a budget on $30 million which made well over $300 million at the box office, showing how much money there was in 3D feature length films. Since Toy story Pixar have released 11 more feature length 3D films and have four more currently in production. Their highest grossing film was Toy Story 3 making over $1 Billion at the box office beating the highest grossing 2D film (1994's The Lion king) which only made over $800 million at the box office. Showing the money in 3D films.
Finally in 2007 Flash CS3 was introduced to the Adobe suite, Flash is a program primary used for animation but you can also make menus and buttons too. Flash uses simple frame by frame animation and tweens to create smooth movement. The graphics used in the program are 2D vector so the images size can be increased or decreased and there will be no pixillation. This software being publically available lead to everyone getting the chance to animate without doing many tedious paper drawings. Also Maya was released in 1998 and was bought by Autodesk in 2005, Maya dominates the 3D market as it is the leading software for 3D animation and modelling.
As you can see animation has gone from simple devices like the zoetrobe to stop motion to animated cartoons and then onto 3D. Hopefully this has given an inside view into the animation evolution of animation throughout history and a look at it's defining moments.
