Early Animation
Precursors to Animation
Victorian parlor toys
Zoetrope (180 AD; 1834)
The magic lantern
Thaumatrope (1824)
Phenakistoscope (1831)
Flip book (1868)
Praxinoscope (1877)
A forerunner of today's comic strip can be found in an Egyptian wall decoration circa 2000 B.C. In
successive panels it depicts the actions of two wrestlers in a variety of holds. In one of Leonardo da
Vinci's most famous illustrations, he shows how the limbs would look in various positions. Giotto's
angels seem to take flight in their repetitive motions. The Japanese used scrolls to tell continuous
stories.
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Since the beginnings of time, human beings have tried to capture a sense of motion in their art.
From the eight-legged boar in the Altamira caves of Northern Spain to paintings alongside the
remains of long-dead pharoahs, this quest for capturing motion has been a common theme
throughout many of mankind's artistic endeavors.
1- Precursors to Animation
Five images sequence from a vase found in Iran. Evidence of artistic interest in depicting figures in
motion can be seen as early as the still drawings of Paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are
depicted with multiple sets of legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to convey the
perception of motion.[1] Other examples include a 5,200-year old earthen bowl found in Iran in Shahr-i
Sokhta and an ancient Egyptian mural. The Persian bowl has five images painted along the sides,
showing phases of a goat leaping up to nip at a tree.[2][3] The Egyptian mural, approximately 4000 years
old, shows wrestlers in action.
Egyptian burial chamber mural. Seven drawings by Leonardo da Vinci (ca. 1510) extending over two
folios in the Windsor Collection, Anatomical Studies of the Muscles of the Neck, Shoulder, Chest, and
Arm, show detailed drawings of the upper body (with a less-detailed facial image), illustrating the
changes as the torso turns from profile to frontal position and the forearm extends.
Even though all these early examples may appear similar to a series of animation drawings, the lack of
equipment to show the images in motion means that these image series are precursors to animation
and cannot be called animation in the modern sense. They do, however, indicate the artists' intentions
and interests in depicting motion.
Many of the early inventions designed to animate images were meant as novelties for private
amusement of children or small parties. Animation devices which fall into this category include the
zoetrope, magic lantern, praxinoscope, thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, and flip book
2- A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures.
The term zoetrope is from the Greek words "zoe", "life" and τρόπος - tropos, "turn". It may be taken to
mean "wheel of life".
It consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the
cylinder is a band which has either individual frames from a video/film or images from a set of
sequenced drawings or photographs. As the cylinder spins the user looks through the slits at the pictures
on the opposite side of the cylinder's interior. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply
blurring together so that the user sees a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, the
equivalent of a motion picture. Cylindrical zoetropes have the property of causing the images to appear
thinner than their actual sizes when viewed in motion through the slits.
3- The magic lantern has a concave mirror behind a light source that gathers light and projects it through
a slide with an image painted onto it. The light rays cross an aperture (which is an opening at the front of
the apparatus), and hits a lens. The lens throws an enlarged picture of the original image from the slide
onto a screen.[1] Main light sources used during the time it was invented in the late 17th century were
candles or oil lamps. These light sources were quite inefficient and produced weak projections. The
invention of the Argand lamp in the 1780s helped to make the projected images brighter. The invention
of the limelight in the 1820s made it even brighter, and following that the inventions of the electric arc
lamp in the 1850s, and then incandescent electric lamps all further improved the projected image of the
magic lantern.[2] It was also an important invention for the motion picture film and 35mm projector
because of its ability to screen moving images. To achieve this, mechanical slides were used to make the
images move. This was done using two glass slides, one with the part of the picture that would remain
stationary and one with the part of the picture that would move on a disc. The glass slides were placed
one on top of the other and a hand-operated pulley wheel was used to turn the movable disc.[3] The
magic lantern also led directly to Eadweard Muybridge’s invention of the zoopraxiscope, which was
another forerunner for moving pictures.[4]
4 - The phenakistoscope use a spinning disc attached vertically on a handle. Around the center of the
disc a series of pictures was drawn corresponding to frames of the animation; around its circumference
was a series of radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's
reflection in a mirror.
The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that
the user would see a rapid succession of images with the appearance of a motion picture (see also
persistence of vision). A variant of it had two discs, one with slits and one with pictures; this was slightly
more unwieldy but needed no mirror. Unlike the zoetrope and its successors, the phenakistoscope could
only practically be used by one person at a time.The phenakistoscope was only famous for about two
years due to the changing of technology.
5- A flip book or flick book is a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the
next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or
some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards
adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate
books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners.
Software packages and websites are also available that convert digital video files into custom-made flip
books.
5a- The Mutoscope worked on the same principle as the "flip book." The individual image frames were
conventional black-and-white, silver-based photographic prints on tough, flexible opaque cards. Rather
than being bound into a booklet, the cards were attached to a circular core, rather like a huge Rolodex.
A reel typically held about 850 cards, giving a viewing time of about a minute. The reel with cards
attached had a total diameter of about ten inches (25 cm); the individual cards had dimensions of about
2-3/4" x 1-7/8" (7 cm x 4.75 cm).
Mutoscopes were coin-operated. The patron viewed the cards through a single lens enclosed by a hood,
similar to the viewing hood of a stereoscope. The cards were generally lit electrically, but the reel was
driven by means of a geared-down hand crank. Each machine held only a single reel and was dedicated
to the presentation of a single short subject, described by a poster affixed to the machine.
6- The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France
in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner
surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow
viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more
or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a
rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture
than the zoetrope offered.
In 1889 Reynaud developed the Théâtre Optique, an improved version capable of projecting images on a
screen from a longer roll of pictures. This allowed him to show hand-drawn animated cartoons to larger
audiences, but it was soon eclipsed in popularity by the photographic film projector of the Lumière
brothers.
A 20th century adaptation of the praxinoscope were Red Raven Magic Mirror and records. The mirror
surfaced carousel sits on a spindle in the centre of a record player. When the special 78 rpm picture
records are played the images printed around the paper label animate. (See Unusual types of
gramophone records)