Animation and its evolution in the world of cinema

Animation has come a long way since the first days of its life. Today, we aren’t surprised by concepts such as 3D models, textures, renders, meshes, and lots of terms that have been invented just for the sake of the advances in technology. We can even learn how to create simple (or complex) animations in software like Flash! But how did all of this begin?

 At the beginning of the 19th century, the predecessor of the first image projectors was invented. Called the magic lamp, Moses Holden created this machine in order to be able to project astronomy pictures. But some years after that invention, creators realized that similar technology could be put to a creative use. That is how during the rest of the century, devices such as the folioscope (1868, a booklet that produced an animated picture when the pages were flipped) were invented.

 You probably have heard about the Lumière brothers in relation to the history of cinema. Their family was one of the biggest producers of photographic plates in Europe, and with their knowledge about photography, brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière designed the world’s very first cinematograph, which allowed to project pictures at a speed of 16 frames per second. They presented their first film in 1895, which marks for many the beginning of cinema as an art.

 At first, people only used the cinematograph to represent daily situations without a plot or an intent, but on 1902 Georges Méliès projected the first sci-fi movie: Le Voyage dans la Lune. It wasn’t until 1908 that the first cartoon animated film was released: its name was Fantasmagorie, and it was created by Émile Cohl by drawing each frame by hand.

 Another notable short film was Gertie the Dinosaur, created on 1912 by Winsor McCay and John A. Fitzsimmons. It required over 10,000 fotograms to portray an animated character with its own personality, which would lay the foundations for studios like Walt Disney’s that would come after. In fact, on 1928 the first animation with sound by Disney, Steamboat Willie, was released. This meant the start of a whole era!

 Studios like Warner Bros, MGM and Disney were in the race for improvements in animation technology, and on 1938 the first animated cartoon film in color by Disney, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. To portray natural movement of figures, elements like the rothoscope were used to draw over a real person’s image on film. Other animation studios focused more in creating series for the small screen, such as Hanna Barbera studios, which created most of the TV cartoons during the 60s.

 Technology kept moving forwards, and it was on 1984 that the short entirely created with computer graphics made its debut: The Adventures of Andre & Wally B, a project developed by Pixar. It wasn’t until 1996 that Pixar created the first film which had been developed 100% with computers, Toy Story, which was widely acclaimed by the public.

 Toy Story was the film that marked the beginning of the CGI (computer generated imagery) era, which slowly started to replace traditional hand drawn animation. However, in Japan the change took place more slowly, since popular studios like Ghibli still relied on traditional media to create big animation hits.

 The use of computer graphics today isn’t limited to the animation genre: it is widely used to create from sci-fi alien creatures to environments, backgrounds, special effects… The techniques have improved greatly in the last two decades, and 3D CGI has been so refined that it’s no longer easy to tell what elements were computer generated and which ones were really in the set.

 Animation in cinema has come a long way, and it only keeps moving forwards. What will be the next step? We’ll have to stay tuned to the world of animation productions to find out!