The History of 2D Animation

2d animation has been around longer than a lot of other existing things the first sign of them can be dated back to paleolithic cave paintings. With this said the pictures that were found in caves are as shown below meaning that the image wasn’t able to be viewed in motion and are just drawn in a line with slight differences to each image in the sequence. This is why the drawings are only acknowledged as attempts at 2d animation as if given the correct equipment that was later on developed to show the animations it would run as one.

The first animation device was created by Ting Huan around 180AD this was called the The Pipe Which Makes Fantasies Appear he used convection (hot air rising) in order to turn vanes that had images on the end, when the device was made to spin at a certain the speed it looked like the images were moving. This device was late remade in 1836 by William George Horner who called it the Daedalum which can be translated in to “The Wheel of the Devil” but it is speculated that it was named after the Daedalus a craftsman used in ancient Greek myths. The Daedalum rose to popularity in the 1860’s and was made in to a children’s toy by William F. Lincoln and the name was changed to Zoetrope meaning “wheel of life”.

Many other devices were created to animate things these were all very similar to the Zoetrope but with improvements and different variations that were made in different countries. Most used the technique of looking through a small slit at an image and spinning the device so that the images appeared to move, the slits that were looked through stopped the images being blurred in to one this was known as the phenakistoscope meaning to deceive. The next was the praxinoscope (action viewer) which incorporated the use of mirrors took away the need to use a slit as it reflected one stationary image which later on allowed the device to be changed to allow large audiences to view the same animation.

There are a few devices that were made to a more original design made more for children than all the other devices. The first is a flipbook something that is still being used today, it is much less complicated than the Daedalum and phenakistoscope as all you have to do in order to make it work is to flick through the pages fast enough that the images start to look like they move. The second although it isn’t quite 2d animation is a thaumatrope which consists of a disk with an image on either side attached to the sting, when you flick twist the string the disk spins and the image appears to combine in to one this is due to what is known as the phi phenomenon.

The Phi phenomenon is the reason that animation works, the Phi phenomenon is where our eye perceives movement from still images; this is done through the speed at which the images are changing and our eyes are receiving information that isn’t there in order to make the picture’s flow together into an animation.

The first animated films were created by Emile Reynaud called “Pauvre Pierrot”, “Le Clown et ses chiens” and “Un bon bock” which were all shown in 1892 on the praxinoscope to a large audience. All of the animations used individually painted images that range from 300 to 700 per animation, each was made to last about 15 minutes. The next step for animation was the creation of character personalities this was first achieved in the animation “Gertie the Dinosaur” made by Winsor McCay in which there was interaction with the animation which allowed a personality to be portrayed. This was the film that set the standard that would be followed by Walt Disney films that would be coming in the future.

Following these small animated sequences the next step was for films to be developed the first ever to be created was made by Quirino Christiani who went on to animate other animated films one of which was the first to use synchronized sound. These like a lot of other animated films created many years ago were lost. The first film with a sound track was “My Old Kentucky Home” in 1926 with this said the music was badly fitted to the film and didn’t synchronize accurately, Disney moved this on to the next stage with their animation “Steamboat Willie” by using a click track so that the music could be synchronized to the animation.

Another form of animation that was first used in 1899 is called stop motion that use pictures of real life objects rather than painted images; this requires the slightest difference to be made in each picture that is taken. This would have been used in many popular animations one form that is used is known as clay animation the main example for this is Wallace and Gromit where everything would have been created from a changeable substance such as clay and pictures taken of each slight change to give the impression of movement.

Lastly the final form of animation is CGI which stands for computer generated imagery meaning that everything was created completely using computers, the first ever film to do this was Disney’s Toy Story. Creators are further trying to improve CGI graphics to a more realistic level examples of this are the final fantasy films that use realistic looking humans as opposed to cartoon looking people, there are so few films like this because there is a lot more work that has to go into making it in order for it to look convincing.

Animation has come a long way since the days of the cave men and is further continuing to develop it to more realistic levels with the use of more detail and 3D technology.