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In the first two weeks of class we covered the early years, from animation toys, to the creation of full films with sound and the pioneering of many important animation processes. It’s a lot, though we haven’t even looked at anything Disney yet.

What it made me realize was that animation history was less of a line than a zig-zag: the back and forth process of invention and industrialization, as well as the cross-pollination of animation techniques between Europe and America. All were important factors in the development of the animation as an art form and as an industry.

Early inventions in what we now think of as animation mostly came from Europe. Frenchman Émile Reynaud created the first film projection animations or Théätre Optique in 1888, expanding from earlier toys such as the phenakistocope and zoetrope, attributed to Joseph Plateau (Belgium) and William G. Horner (UK) respectively. As early as the zoetrope however, Americans tapped into industry and manufacturing; American William Ensign Lincoln licensed his version of the zoetrope to the board game company Milton Bradley and Co. in 1865-66.

Of course what interests us is the techniques that have become standard. John Randolph Bray (US) and Raoul Barré (Canada/US) were important in creating both technical processes, such as celluloid [cels] and the hole and peg system, and production processes, i.e. the industrial animation pipeline; all three are still in use in some form or another today, speaking to how influential their inventions were. Interestingly, Barré, with Bill Nolan, was also the first to make animated adverts, and created the first 100% animation focused studio.

The first character driven animation, or perhaps ‘animated cartoon’, was Emile Cohl’s (France/US) Fantoche the Clown in 1908; American cartoons included Krazy Kat (1916), Felix the Cat (Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer 1919), and Fleischer studios’ iconic characters (1920s-30s). And of course later on we’ll meet Mickey Mouse, most iconic of all animated cartoons.

American Winsor McCay is an interesting case; the naturalistic draftsmanship he used from his illustration background elevated animation to a new level. He also pioneered technical animation methods such as inbetweening and cycles/loops as shown in Gertie the Dinosaur (1913), for which John Randolph Bray tried to sue him after patenting those methods. Gertie also carries the legacy of animation as performance and showmanship like with early pioneers Georges Méliès (France) and James Stuart Blackton (US).

Animation was exclusively in short film form, until the first European feature-length animation films. They include El Apostol (1917) and Peludopolis (1930) by Italian-Argentinian Quirino Cristiani, the second of which was the first with sound, and The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) by German Lotte Reiniger and her team. Achmed in particular seems important to me, as its use of the multiplane glass technique allowed for many-layered backgrounds that further pushed animation towards a truly cinematic look, and was an early version of the multiplane camera, which was used in Disney’s first feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and allowed it great compositional depth.

We always think of Disney when we think of animation history. In a way, Disney’s Golden Age is kind of an ‘Italian Renaissance’ of animation, because it married both industrial efficiency and artistic height. But without seeing the historical context before and at the time of Disney’s birth, we could easily forget the early origins and all the other milestones that allowed Disney to flourish.

Claudia Lau