Early Developments of Stop Motion Animation
Joseph Plateau
A physicist in 1832 called Joseph Plateau created something called a phenakistoscope, this consisted of two discs the first with slots around the edge and the second with the drawings around. The discs should have 16 slits and 16 identical still images in. This was the invention created by Faraday however it was Plateau's idea to move each image little by little in order to create the illusion of movement. After this had been discovered Joseph collaborated with the artist Melanie Christine Lannuyer and went on to create some beautiful phenakistiscopes together. Joseph was often very ill and had to spend a lot of time in the countryside where he enjoyed drawing and catching butterflies. He was also interested in recreational physics which could have lead him onto creating the phenakistoscope. He may have combined his two interests together and used drawing and physics to aid him in the making of the phenakistoscope. This is when stop motion animation was first seen and how it was first developed. The phenakistoscope was given a variety of names including the phantasmascope and the fantoscope. It was an extremely popular toy for around 2 years because it was different to many of the other products on the market. I think the target audience for this toy would again be for children because they may have believed it was quite magical that the toy created a moving image. His work inspired many different people in the arts of stop motion and if it wasn't for his findings animation may not be what it is today. Here is a short clip to show what a phenakistoscope looks like when at work.
William George Horner
A physicist in 1832 called Joseph Plateau created something called a phenakistoscope, this consisted of two discs the first with slots around the edge and the second with the drawings around. The discs should have 16 slits and 16 identical still images in. This was the invention created by Faraday however it was Plateau's idea to move each image little by little in order to create the illusion of movement. After this had been discovered Joseph collaborated with the artist Melanie Christine Lannuyer and went on to create some beautiful phenakistiscopes together. Joseph was often very ill and had to spend a lot of time in the countryside where he enjoyed drawing and catching butterflies. He was also interested in recreational physics which could have lead him onto creating the phenakistoscope. He may have combined his two interests together and used drawing and physics to aid him in the making of the phenakistoscope. This is when stop motion animation was first seen and how it was first developed. The phenakistoscope was given a variety of names including the phantasmascope and the fantoscope. It was an extremely popular toy for around 2 years because it was different to many of the other products on the market. I think the target audience for this toy would again be for children because they may have believed it was quite magical that the toy created a moving image. His work inspired many different people in the arts of stop motion and if it wasn't for his findings animation may not be what it is today. Here is a short clip to show what a phenakistoscope looks like when at work.
William George Horner
Emile Reynaud
After this the praxinoscope was created by Emile Reynaud who apparently made the first animated movie in the history of cinema. The praxinoscope was made in France in 1877 and similar to the zoetrope it contained a strip of images place inside a cylindrical shape however there would be a mirror placed in the middle to reflect the image in a different place. This had a small advatage over the zoetrope becuase you didn't have to wait for the cylynder to get fast enough for the images to be visible you could simply just look through the mirror. Also it is positioned better than the zoetrope because you can look in the centre instead of looking through slits in the side. I think the praxinoscope would have been more expensive to create because it contains a number of mirrors unlike the zoetrope. Using Emile's technique he was then able to go on and project the series of images onto a screen which he called Theatre Optique. This was a development of the praxinoscope called the projection praxinoscope. This development of animation used a lantern to view the images however only 12 images could be used. Although this was the case Emile changed this by using longer strips of paper with more and more moving images on and eventually created a much longer show for an audience to view. He then became the first man to produce cartoon films for public viewing. This type of animation sold well in Paris and was used in a number of large departement stores. In 1892 Emile gave his first public showing of his creation in Paris, he called this pantomimes lumineuses. This included 3 short shows each having around 500 - 600 different images, these lasted for about 15 minutes. The show stayed in Paris until 1900 and by this time the show had been seen by 500,000 people, this proved the popularity of animation and highlighted how it was unique. The short clip shows one of the three shows in Pantomimes Lumineuses which was called Pauvre Pierrot. The genre of this certain film was romance and this was one of the first animated films ever created. I think it would have been quite hard to create a darker genre by using this technique because the characters look very child like. I think it would be easier to create a more upbeat and happy genre. I think this style of stop motion animation may have started out to be aimed at children however he has found ways to make it aimed at adults because it was so unique at the time to see an image projected onto a screen.
Eadweard Muybridge
The lumiere brothers, auguste and louis were the first people to create an actual camera that could not only take pictures but could also film things aswell. This was all inspired partly from seeing Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope however also because they worked in their fathers photographic factory. The camera that they produced was called a cinematographe and it could film things for around 50 seconds. The first film of theirs that was shown to an audience was taken of some workers coming out of a factory in Lyon, where the two brothers were born. This was also the first projected screening to an audience. One of the brothers films screened in Paris in 1895 was marked as the start of cinema, after this screening the brothers began to market their camera and this was soon in demand all over the world. It was the begining of cinema. Their work was mainly of things in everyday life and the two brothers thought people would get bored of seeing things that they can easily see without the use of a camera. They believed it would be a medium without a future. One of their films was of a traim arriving at the station and apparently there were people from the audeince screaming because they thought it was going to come out of the screen. I think it had this effect on people because it is something that had never been done before and it was completly new to people. I think the main genre for the lumiere brothers was realism because they took footage of things that happened in everyday life. They also produced some documentaries as well as short films. I think their work would have been aimed at adults because they may be more aware about the amazement of film in those days than children. I think they would appreciate it more than a child would because it was rare to see a film in those days. Also their work was mainly surrounded aorund daily life which may have been quite boring for children. The genre for the Lumiere Brothers was realism. This short clip is one of their films shot in 1895 -
George Pal was born in 1908, his parents were famous celebrities however they divorced and he was brought up by his grandparents. He was very interested in architecture and he studied it for a while until he found work as an illistrater. This work was unpaid so he decided to immigrate to Berlin were he found work at the UFA studios. Here he became head of their cartoon production in just a short amount of time. I think George was so driven becuase of his parents fame, he may have wanted to seek the same fame as they did. When he left here he began animating cigarettes however no-one was interested in advertising animated cigarettes in Czechoslovakia. Pal then moved over to Paris because they were more interested in his work, the first company Pal went to brought his idea and it made George famous because of the animations big success. He then moved to Holland and opened up his own studios called Dollywood Studios. After this he was signed to Paramount Pictures were some other famous animators worked such as Ray Harryhausen. At Paramount George Pal created lots of successful puppetoons, because of this Paramount allowed him to do feature films. His first one was called Destination Moon. He won numerous awards for the special effects in his feature films and therefore he decided to go on and create his own films at his studio. Some of his most famous work being, War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. His animation was inspirational and was very popular. The genre for War of the Worlds was sci-fi which indicates how animation genre has changed over the years. Some of the puppets that George pal used had numerous heads so instead of having one head he could use more to make the character speak. This is now seen in more modern animation such as The Nightmare before Christmas, so it shows how George Pals work may have inspired more modern developments of animation. He also inspired other animators and film-makers because he was very resourceful and he always thought big on any project he was doing. George Pal also created animation for TV such as Phillips Broadcast made in 1938. This was created using puppetoons, the puppetoons were made out of individually carved pieces of wood. I think George Pals work stood out because it was completly original and it showed a high level of skill, also it was quite different to the past stop motion animation that was seen and it was much more striking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_Optique
http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/lumiere.html
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/bdc/young_bdc/movingpics/movingpics10.htm
http://www.awn.com/heaven_and_hell/PAL/GP12.htm
Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer who immigrated to the United States when he was a young adult. He was very experimental with his photography which lead him onto discovering forms of stop motion anaimtion. In 1877 Eadweard decided to try high speed photography, he then decided to experiment with a horse in motion. He set up a series of 50 different cameras all in one line, facing the horse track. He controlled the cameras by conecting their shutters to trip wires across the track so that when the horse sped past the camera would capture each image. The Horse in Motion created by Muybridge again in 1882 was considered to be the first moving picture by some people. In 1879 Eadweard Muybridge created a devise called the zoopraxiscope, this could project a series of images that gave the illusion of movement. Similar to the phenakistoscope the zoopraxiscope used discs to create movement however this time they were made of glass. Eadweard's designs then went on to inspire Thomas Edison and William Dickson's to create another device of motion called the kinetoscope. It works by looking through a small window and viewing a sequence of images on a film strip with a light positioned behind and a high shutter speed. The mechanism of the kinetoscope was run by an electric motor, this was made in 1892. The motor provided movement for the series of images to go around the kinetoscope in order for it to be viewed through the peephole. The short clip shows you inside a kineoscope and how all the mechanisms work in order for us to see a clear moving image. I think this design was created more for adults because it is a much more technical device that was more difficult to use than some of the other equipment.
The Lumiere Brothers
The Lumiere Brothers
The lumiere brothers, auguste and louis were the first people to create an actual camera that could not only take pictures but could also film things aswell. This was all inspired partly from seeing Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope however also because they worked in their fathers photographic factory. The camera that they produced was called a cinematographe and it could film things for around 50 seconds. The first film of theirs that was shown to an audience was taken of some workers coming out of a factory in Lyon, where the two brothers were born. This was also the first projected screening to an audience. One of the brothers films screened in Paris in 1895 was marked as the start of cinema, after this screening the brothers began to market their camera and this was soon in demand all over the world. It was the begining of cinema. Their work was mainly of things in everyday life and the two brothers thought people would get bored of seeing things that they can easily see without the use of a camera. They believed it would be a medium without a future. One of their films was of a traim arriving at the station and apparently there were people from the audeince screaming because they thought it was going to come out of the screen. I think it had this effect on people because it is something that had never been done before and it was completly new to people. I think the main genre for the lumiere brothers was realism because they took footage of things that happened in everyday life. They also produced some documentaries as well as short films. I think their work would have been aimed at adults because they may be more aware about the amazement of film in those days than children. I think they would appreciate it more than a child would because it was rare to see a film in those days. Also their work was mainly surrounded aorund daily life which may have been quite boring for children. The genre for the Lumiere Brothers was realism. This short clip is one of their films shot in 1895 -
George Pal
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| George Pal - War of the Worlds |
George Pal was born in 1908, his parents were famous celebrities however they divorced and he was brought up by his grandparents. He was very interested in architecture and he studied it for a while until he found work as an illistrater. This work was unpaid so he decided to immigrate to Berlin were he found work at the UFA studios. Here he became head of their cartoon production in just a short amount of time. I think George was so driven becuase of his parents fame, he may have wanted to seek the same fame as they did. When he left here he began animating cigarettes however no-one was interested in advertising animated cigarettes in Czechoslovakia. Pal then moved over to Paris because they were more interested in his work, the first company Pal went to brought his idea and it made George famous because of the animations big success. He then moved to Holland and opened up his own studios called Dollywood Studios. After this he was signed to Paramount Pictures were some other famous animators worked such as Ray Harryhausen. At Paramount George Pal created lots of successful puppetoons, because of this Paramount allowed him to do feature films. His first one was called Destination Moon. He won numerous awards for the special effects in his feature films and therefore he decided to go on and create his own films at his studio. Some of his most famous work being, War of the Worlds and The Time Machine. His animation was inspirational and was very popular. The genre for War of the Worlds was sci-fi which indicates how animation genre has changed over the years. Some of the puppets that George pal used had numerous heads so instead of having one head he could use more to make the character speak. This is now seen in more modern animation such as The Nightmare before Christmas, so it shows how George Pals work may have inspired more modern developments of animation. He also inspired other animators and film-makers because he was very resourceful and he always thought big on any project he was doing. George Pal also created animation for TV such as Phillips Broadcast made in 1938. This was created using puppetoons, the puppetoons were made out of individually carved pieces of wood. I think George Pals work stood out because it was completly original and it showed a high level of skill, also it was quite different to the past stop motion animation that was seen and it was much more striking.
Sources http://www.redorbit.com/education/reference_library/technology_1/inventions/2583640/kinetoscope/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoopraxiscopehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_Optique
http://www.alchemists.com/visual_alchemy/lumiere.html
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/bdc/young_bdc/movingpics/movingpics10.htm
http://www.awn.com/heaven_and_hell/PAL/GP12.htm
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