Animation Movie
In 1906, Blackton also made the first drawn work of
animation on standard film, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. It features faces
that are drawn on a chalkboard and then suddenly move autonomously.
Fantasmagorie, by the French director Émile Cohl (also called Émile Courtet),
is also noteworthy.
Animation refers to the creation of a sequence of
images—drawn, painted, or produced by other artistic methods—that change over
time to portray the illusion of motion. Before the invention of film, humans
depicted motion in static art as far back as the Paleolithic period. In the 1st
century, several devices successfully depicted motion in animated images.
An animated cartoon is a film for the cinema,
television or computer screen, which is made using sequential drawings, as
opposed to animations in general, which include films made using clay, puppet
and other means.
Animation
before film
Numerous devices that
successfully displayed animated images were introduced well before the advent
of the motion picture. These devices were used to entertain, amaze, and
sometimes even frighten people. The majority of these devices didn't project
their images, and accordingly could only be viewed by a single person at any
one time. For this reason they were considered toys rather than devices for a
large scale entertainment industry like later animation. Many of these devices
are still built by and for film students learning the basic principles of
animation
Thaumatrope
(1824)
A thaumatrope is a
simple toy that was popular in the 19th century. It is a small disk with
different pictures on each side, such as a bird and a cage, and is attached to
two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled quickly between the fingers,
the pictures appear to combine into a single image. This demonstrates the persistence
of vision, the fact that the perception of an object by the eyes and brain
continues for a small fraction of a second after the view is blocked or the
object is removed. The invention of the device is often credited to Sir John
Herschel, but John Ayrton Paris popularized it in 1824 when he demonstrated it
to the Royal College of Physicians.
Walt
Disney & Warner Bros
In 1923, a studio
called Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupt and its owner, Walt Disney, opened a new
studio in Los Angeles. Disney's first project was the Alice Comedies series,
which featured a live action girl interacting with numerous cartoon characters.
Disney's first notable breakthrough was 1928's Steamboat Willie, the third of
the Mickey Mouse series. It was the first cartoon that included a fully
post-produced soundtrack, featuring voice and sound effects printed on the film
itself ("sound-on-film"). The short film showed an anthropomorphic
mouse named Mickey neglecting his work on a steamboat to instead make music
using the animals aboard the boat.
In 1930, Warner Brothers Cartoons were founded.
While Disney's studio was known for its releases being strictly controlled by
Walt Disney himself, Warner brothers allowed its animators more freedom, which
allowed for their animators to develop more recognizable personal styles.
The first animation to use the full, three-color
Technicolor method was Flowers and Trees, made in 1932 by Disney Studios, which
won an Academy Award for the work. Color animation soon became the industry
standard, and in 1934, Warner Brothers released Honeymoon Hotel of the Merrie
Melodies series, their first color films. Meanwhile, Disney had realized that
the success of animated films depended upon telling emotionally gripping
stories; he developed an innovation called a "story department" where
storyboard artists separate from the animators would focus on story development
alone, which proved its worth when the Disney studio released in 1933 the
first-ever animated short to feature well-developed characters, Three Little
Pigs In 1935, Tex Avery released his first film with Warner Brothers. Avery's
style was notably fast paced, violent, and satirical, with a slapstick
sensibility
Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs
Many consider Walt Disney's 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the first animated feature film, though at least seven films were released earlier. However, Disney's film was the first one completely made using hand-drawn animation. The previous seven films, of which only four survive, were made using cutout, silhouette or stop motion, except for one—also made by Disney seven months prior to Snow White's release—Academy Award Review of Walt Disney Cartoons. This was an anthology film to promote the upcoming release of Snow White. However, many do not consider this a genuine feature film because it is a package film. In addition, at approximately 41 minutes, the film does not seem to fulfill today's expectations for a feature film. However, the official BFI, AMPAS and AFI definitions of a feature film require that it be over 40 minutes long, which, in theory, should make it the first animated feature film using traditional animation.
But as Snow White was also the first one to become
successful and well-known within the English-speaking world, people tend to
disregard the seven films. Following Snow White's release, Disney began to
focus much of its productive force on feature length films. Though Disney did
continue to produce shorts throughout the century, Warner Brothers continued to
focus on shorts.
The
television era
Color television was
introduced to the US Market in 1951. In 1958, Hanna-Barbera released
Huckleberry Hound, the first half-hour television program to feature only
animation. Terrytoons released Tom Terrific the same year. In 1960,
Hanna-Barbera released another monumental animated television show, The
Flintstones, which was the first animated series on prime time television.
Television significantly decreased public attention to the animated shorts
being shown in theatres.
Indian
Animation
The Indian animation
industry encompasses both 2D traditional, and 3D animation, as well as visual
effects for feature films. In 1956, Disney Studios animator Clair Weeks, who
had worked on Bambi, was invited to Films Division of India in Mumbai to
establish and train the country's first animation studio as part of the
American Technical Co-Operation mission. He trained a core group of Indian
animators, whose first production was a film called The Banyan Deer (1957).
Veteran animator Ram Mohan started his career at Films Division's Cartoon Unit.
Another landmark animated film from Films Division
is "Ek Anek Aur Ekta", a short traditionally animated short
educational film released in 1974.[4][5] The film is presented as a fable meant
to teach children the value of unity, and was frequently broadcast on India's
state-run television station, Doordarshan. The first Indian animated television
series is Ghayab Aaya, aired in 1986 and directed by Suddhasattwa Basu. The
first Indian 3D and VFX was done for television series Captain Vyom by
Animation.
The first Indian 3D animated film was Roadside
Romeo, which was a joint venture between Yash Raj Films and the Indian division
of the Walt Disney Company. It was written and directed by Jugal Hansraj