History of Animation
The Early Days
Persistence of vision was discovered in the early 1800's. Our eye and brain retain a visual impression for about 1/30th of a second. Persistence of vision prevents us from noticing that a motion picture screen is dark about half the time, and that a television image is just one bright, fast, discrete dot sweeping the screen. Motion pictures show one new frame (still picture of the movie clip) every 1/24th of a second and the same frame is shown three times during this time period (Persistence, 2001). The eye retains the image of each frame long enough, giving an illusion of smooth, continuous motion. Animation uses exactly the same principle to render the idea of motion. This led to such devices as the zoetrope, or "wheel of life." The zoetrope has a short, fat cylinder, which rotated on its axis of symmetry. Around the inside of the cylinder was a sequence of drawings, each one slightly different from the one next to it. The cylinder had long slits cut into its side in between each of the images so that when the cylinder was spun a slit would allow the eye to see the image on the oppose wall of the cylinder. As the cylinder was spun on its axis, the sequence of slits passing in front of the eye would present a sequence of images to the eye, creating the illusion of motion. Another low-tech animation piece of equipment was the flipbook. The flipbook was a tablet of paper with an individual drawing on each page so the viewer could flip through them. This was also popular in the 1800s. However, these devices were little more than parlor curiosities used for light entertainment. While studying the early days of conventional animation is interesting in itself, the purpose for presenting an overview here is to gain an appreciation of the technological advances, which drove the progress of animation in the beginning. The earliest hint of using a camera to make lifeless things appear to move was by Meleis in 1890 using simple tricks. The earliest
Persistence of vision was discovered in the early 1800's. Our eye and brain retain a visual impression for about 1/30th of a second. Persistence of vision prevents us from noticing that a motion picture screen is dark about half the time, and that a television image is just one bright, fast, discrete dot sweeping the screen. Motion pictures show one new frame (still picture of the movie clip) every 1/24th of a second and the same frame is shown three times during this time period (Persistence, 2001). The eye retains the image of each frame long enough, giving an illusion of smooth, continuous motion. Animation uses exactly the same principle to render the idea of motion. This led to such devices as the zoetrope, or "wheel of life." The zoetrope has a short, fat cylinder, which rotated on its axis of symmetry. Around the inside of the cylinder was a sequence of drawings, each one slightly different from the one next to it. The cylinder had long slits cut into its side in between each of the images so that when the cylinder was spun a slit would allow the eye to see the image on the oppose wall of the cylinder. As the cylinder was spun on its axis, the sequence of slits passing in front of the eye would present a sequence of images to the eye, creating the illusion of motion. Another low-tech animation piece of equipment was the flipbook. The flipbook was a tablet of paper with an individual drawing on each page so the viewer could flip through them. This was also popular in the 1800s. However, these devices were little more than parlor curiosities used for light entertainment. While studying the early days of conventional animation is interesting in itself, the purpose for presenting an overview here is to gain an appreciation of the technological advances, which drove the progress of animation in the beginning. The earliest hint of using a camera to make lifeless things appear to move was by Meleis in 1890 using simple tricks. The earliest