The Beginings of a New Art Form

The creation of animation can't be attributed to any single person or film; rather it was developed over several years during the early 1900s by people building on those before them as they inched closer and closer to what we now understand as animation today. Today I will cover some of the early milestones of animation that led it to become a mainstream industry. 

1900: One of the earliest steps towards animation was the short video The Enchanted Drawing created by cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton where he uses stop-camera tricks to give the appearance of him interacting with a cartoon man. Although the film is not considered true animation it is an important milestone towards the development of later films.

1906: After other artists expanded on his techniques, J. Stuart Blackton came back to create what is commonly considered the first animated film titled Humorous Phases of Funny Faces which uses chalk drawings and cut out pieces of paper to achieve true animation. 

1914: After Blackton's work in 1906, many other artists began experimenting with animation. One of the most notable is Winsor McCay who created the Gertie the Dinosaur series which helped bring animation into mainstream view. In this work you can see how animation had been refined in the 8 years since it's inception from choppy and rigid movement into something more believable for the audience.

1920-1930s: By this time animation had developed into a fledgling industry producing gag animations, but it wasn't until Walt Disney brought his passion for pushing the limits and furthering animation as a serious art form that it was brought into the mainstream. Walt Disney started his studio in Hollywood, California working on the Alice Comedies which featured a young girl going on various adventures. It wasn't until 1928 with the short film Steamboat Willie that Walt enjoyed his first major commercial success. Not only was Steamboat Willie the first public introduction of Mickey Mouse, though not the first animation to feature him, it was also the first animation to have a full post-produced soundtrack. Mickey Mouse's popularity would later skyrocket in the 1930s, bringing Walt Disney's studio to the forefront of animation both in popularity and technique.

Walt Disney and his team of animators eventually went on to create some of the most successful animated films of all time. In the next blog post I will cover what is known as The Golden Age of animation up to the introduction of 3D animation into the feature film industry.



Sources

Simmon, S. (1999, March 31). Notes on the origins of american animation, 1900-1921. Retrieved from http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/oahtml/oapres.html

Thomas, F., & Johnston, O. (1981). The illusion of life: Disney animation. New York, NY: Walt Disney Productions.