A
forerunner of today's comic strip can be found in an Egyptian wall decoration
circa 2000 B.C. In successive panels it depicts the actions of two wrestlers in
a variety of holds. In one of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous illustrations, he
shows how the limbs would look in various positions. Giotto's angels seem to
take flight in their repetitive motions. The Japanese used scrolls to tell
continuous stories.
Since
the beginnings of time, human beings have tried to capture a sense of motion in
their art. From the eight-legged boar in the Altamira caves of Northern Spain
to paintings alongside the remains of long-dead pharoahs, this quest for
capturing motion has been a common theme throughout many of mankind's artistic
endeavors.
True
animation cannot be achieved without first understanding a fundamental
principle of the human eye: the persistance of vison. This was first
demonstrated in 1828 by Frenchman, Paul Roget, who invented the thaumatrope
(left, click to stop). It was a disc with a string or peg attahced to both
sides. One side of the disc showed a bird, the other an empty cage. When the
disc was twirled, the bird appeared in the cage. This proved that the eye
retains images when it is exposed to a series of pictures, one at a time.
Two
other inventions helped to further the cause of animation. The phenakistoscope,
invented by Joseph Plateau in 1826, was a circular card with slits
around the edge. The viewer held the card up to a mirror and peered through the
slits as the card whirled. Through a series of drawings around the
circumference of the card, the viewer saw a progression of images resulting in
a moving object. The same technique applied to the zeotrope. In 1860, Pierre
Desvignes, inserted a strip of paper containing drawings on the inside of a
drumlike cylinder. The drum twirled on a spindle, and the viewer gazed through
slots ot the top of the drum. The figures on the inside magically came to life,
endlessly looping in an acrobatic feat.
The
development of the motion camera and projector by Thomas A. Edison and others
provided the first real practical means of making animation. Even still, the
animation was done in the simplest of means. Stuart Blackton, issued a
short film in 1906 entitled Humourous Phases of Funny Faces where he
drew comical faces on a blackboard, photographed them, and the erased it to
draw another stage of the facial expression. This "stop-motion"
effect astonished audiences by making drawings comes to life.
In
the early twenties, the popularity of the animated cartoon was on the decline,
and movie exhibitors were looking elswhere for alternative entertainment media.
The public was tired of the old formula of stringing sight gags together
without including a story line or any character development. What the art of
animation could accomplish was not yet evident in this period, except for in
the works of Winsor McCay such as Gertie the Dinosaur, 1914.
Mccay's major accomplishment was the fact that he had developed a character in
his dinosaur, something that had previously only been seen in Otto Messmer's,
Felix the Cat. McCay's piece had a galvanizing effect on audiences. The
notion of a dinosaur coming to life on the screen was astonishing. Of all the
early animations, Felix the Cat developed the strongest screen
personality, but failed to develop any further, relying on crude visual tricks
to entertain the audience as opposed to developing a stronger screen persona.
"Plots? We never bothered with plots. They were just a series of
gags strung together. And not very funny, I'm afraid." - Dick Huemer, 1957
At
this time, many of the animations were based on primitive gags and violence,
which is still true of cartoons today. One character would beat another
mercilessly, only to have his victim instantly recover and return the favor.
Perhaps the hero would swing his sword and reduce the villian to baloney
slices, only to have him reappear as if magically rejoined.
A
big change came over the industry in the mid twenties: commercialization. Big
studios took over the smaller cottage industries and set standards for
animation. Animators were given quotas on the number of drawings they had to
produce a day. Cartoons now had to manufactured in quantity and cheaply.
The
same gags were worked and reworked. Audiences became apathetic as the novelty
of seeing drawings come to life wore off. This caused a depression in the
animation business that coincided with the depression in the economy of the
United States.
Patrick
James
pjames@viz.tamu.edu
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