Assignment 5 - Animation - A history of animation

The Pioneers

William Horner - Born 1786, died 1837. Inventor of the Zoetrope in 1833.

Auguste and Louis Lumiere - Auguste born 1862, Louis born 1864. Credited with inventing the cinematograph but that credit actually should be due to Leon Bouly. They also made the very first film; a 46 second documentary called "worker's leaving the Lumiere factory".

Emile Reynaud - Born 1844, died 1918. Inventor of the praxinoscope and made the first animated cartoons like "Pauvre Pierrot".

Joseph Plateau - born 1801, died 1883. Inventor of the Phenakistoscope.

Edward Muybridge and Edison - Muybridge created the horse in motion theory and Edison created the Kinetoscope but it was actually his assistant, a photographer who invented it.

The Inventions

The Zoetrope was invented in 1833 but it's origins actually date back to 180AD in China. It is simply is a device that gives static pictures the appearance of movement. This is achieved by placing a strip of paper with a number of images that show an action that is fluent and repetitive and this strip is placed around a cylinder and around this cylinder is a border with slits in it. Spinning this quickly creates the movement. This device is actually seen in the movie "The Woman in Black". The creator of the device William Horner referred to this device as "The Daedalum" which is rumoured to be linked to the Greek myth of "Daedalus" (the wheel of death). Failing to catch on it was re-named and patented the Zoetrope (The wheel of life).

The Phenakistoscope was invented by Joseph Plateau in 1832; he demonstrated this by using a counter rotating disks with repeatedly drawn images with small movements in on and small spaced out slits in the other while looking in a mirror creating the illusion of movement.

The Praxinoscope, created by Emile Reynaud in 1877 which was a device that surpasses its predecessor the Zoetrope. Instead of holding the device up to a mirror he took the same design but added a circular mirror to it so it could be used anywhere. It was improved upon and became capable of projecting images on a screen from a long roll of pictures. This allowed  hand drawn animated cartoons to be shown to a larger audience, but it was soon overtaken in popularity by the photographic film projector from Auguste and Louis Lumière.

The Thaumatrope was one of the first illusionist devices from 1823 and the credit to this device usually goes to  either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget. The device is a circle of with two separate images on either side and a piece of string on the edges. If the device is spun it makes the two separate pictures become one, just as seen in the film "Sleepy Hollow".

The Kinetoscope was an early motion picture device allowing a single person to a short piece of footage through a peephole. The device was essentially a box that had strips of reels running through it that were projected by a light to enlarge the image and create the motion picture. This invention was given full credit to Thomas Edison but it was actually mostly invented by his assistant, a photographer called William Kennedy Laurie Dickson.

The Persistence of vision
This is a theory that the eye can retain an image on the retina for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second. There have been many theories to why this is but many have also been disproved. A example of when this retained image is kept can be used in the same sense of when a person or object stands in front of a light reflecting or showing background; if you stare at it for a length of time and then close your eyes the outline of the person or object will still remain in your vision.