Animation has gone a long way since its simple doodle beginnings. Now with news that the prestigious 2009 Cannes Film Festival will be opened by a 3D-animation feature (Pixar’s Up) for the very first time, it is high time we revisit the important milestones of animation throughout the years:
The very first instance of the ability of humans to replicate their surroundings through drawings were already apparent as early as Paleolithic cave paintings. In these drawings, animals were represented with four legs and seemed to have a semblance of motion. The closest discovered artifact was a 5,200 year old bowl made of earth which was discovered in Iran. In the sides of the Persian pottery, an image of a goat can be seen while leaping up to a tree.
An Egyptian mural found in a burial chamber, estimated to be around 4,000 years old, contains a series of wrestlers, drawn with complexity while performing their moves on each other. Although it did not depict images in motion, as we know of animation today, the images surely had intentions of showing the wrestlers perform their match.
From hereon out, human civilizations have started to create the earliest instruments to convey animation – images played in rapid succession to convey movement. China, circa 180 AD, had the zoetrope, an invention of the genius Ting Huan. The zoetrope is hung over a lamp with translucent panels of paper. The panels would seem to move when the lamp was spun in fast motion. This zoetrope turned into the magic lantern in Europe (Thaumatrope in 1824, Phenakistoscope in 1831 and Praxinoscope in 1877). Eventually these devices became the blueprint for the modern day projector.
Animation slowly entered the consciousness of the modern-day civilization when it pervaded the mass media in the 20th century all over the globe. From the puppet animations of Russia in the 1910 to the work of Emile Cohl in France, animation slowly started to become a trend in communicating narratives and messages.
With the blossoming of Hollywood in California as the center of film entertainment in the United States of America, animation grew wings and developed further. Beginning with Koko the Clown and Felix the Cat, animation in Hollywood started as theatricals to complement the silent films of the 1900s to the 1920s.
Walt Disney and his Disney studios dominated in the 1930s with Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Catching on the trend, Warner Bros. and MGM rose to prominence as well. Hanna-Barbera Productions took on the mantle in the 1950s with its animated titles such as Flintstones and Yogi Bear. The animation scene in Asia was also very active with the rise of the animé genre.
An important step in the evolution of animation was stop motion. Instead of using traditional animation wherein images are drawn on paper, stop motion animators would use actual physical objects. This methodology involved photographng the objects in successive motion and in varying angles to depict motion. Popular clay animations were Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit. Stop motion animation as also pivotal in the special effects of the classic films King kong (1933) and the 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
Animated movies took a revolutionary with the introduction of computer-generated images (CGI) in the 1990s. Toy Story by Pixar is being credited as the first film done entirely in CGI when it was released in 1995 (developed from 1991-1995). CGI animation is a very tedious process and still adheres to the principles of traditional animation – the primary difference is the use of 3D modelling to achieve a more realistic look for animations. It can be even considered as a virtual version of stop motion because of its 3D principles.
CGI animation is the current benchmark of animated movies. With technologies improving, such as the InTru 3D breakthrough of Dreamworks used in the film Monsters vs. Aliens, the prospects for 3D animation are growing even brighter throughout the years.
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