Comprehensive History of 2D Animation
50,000 - 10,000 BC - Cave paintings from the paleolithic age depicting animals in motion. Debatably humanity’s first attempts at capturing motion with art and our first step towards animation as we know it today.
4,000 BC - In the tomb of Knhumotep, an Egypitian mural depicting a wrestling match piece by piece, resembling a modern day storyboard.
3,000 BC - An Iranian bowl sports images of a goat jumping to eat leaves from a tree in a manner similar to modern day keyframing.
180 AD - Chinese inventor, Ting Haun, is said to have created the Chao Hua Chich Kuan, or the pipe which makes fantasies appear, believed to be the first conception of what would later become the Zoetrope.
1824 AD - The Thaumatrope, a disk with two pictures on either side of it and connected to a piece of string which, when turned, flipped the disk quickly enough that the two images looks like they combine into one moving image, is invented. The invention is somewhat debatable but is often credited to John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget.
This replicates in a very simple manner the concept of a flip book animation.
(note: In 2012 it was reported that a prehistoric version of the Thaumatrope had
been found in the Chauvet Caves in France).
1839 AD - Belgian physisist, Joseph Plateu, takes a concept that had been noted and experimented with by the likes of Ancient Greek Mathematician Euclid and Newton and popularised it in the form of the phenakistoscope. The phenakistoscope consists of a disk with a series of drawing depicting an action around the edge of it, equal distance away from one another. Between the drawings were slots. When held up to the mirror and spun, a person could look through the slots and watch as the glimpses of each image in quick succession gave the illusion of movement.
This process is beginning to get closer to the concept of film.
1833 AD - British Mathematician, William George Horner, recreates the Chao Hua Chich Kuan and renames it the daedalum, although it’s popularly referred to as the ‘Wheel of the devil’.
The device consisted of a cylinder with a strip of images placed along the edge inside it. Like the phenakistoscope, it had slits cut into the side of it so when viewed through these slits a person would see a succession of glimpses of each frame and be given the illusion of movement from it.
In the 1860’s it was marketed by William F. Lincoln as the Zoetrope and gained popularity.
1868 - John Barnes Linnet is credited with the creation of the first flip book, which he named the kineograph.
While earlier inventions limited the animator in regards to the length of their animation the flip book provided them with much more freedom. It was also more easily accessible to the masses as the only tools one absolutely needed was a book and their hands.
Many early film animators cited the flipbook as their primary source of inspiration to get into the field.
1877 - French science teacher, Charles-Émile Reynaud created the Praxinoscope and in 1892, projected the first animation in public. He painted his animation directly onto strips of celluloid.
1889 - The Kinetoscope invented by Edisson to allow one person to view a film by looking through a peephole whilst a long loop of film ran inside.This was the most common way of viewing film at the time.
1895 - Louis and Augistine Lumiere create the cinematograph, created to rectify what they saw as shortcomings of Edisson's Kinetoscope. The cinematograph was able to be projected so unlike the Kinetoscope, could be viewed by a greater number of people at one time, opening film and animation up to a much larger audience.
1899 - Stop Motion animation is invented by Albert.E.Smith and Stuart Blackton.
1900 - Enchanted Drawing becomes the first film recorded on standard picture film to include animation. It’s a combination of silent film and stop motion animation.
1906 - The Humourous Stages of Funny Faces becomes the first entirely animated films and cements its creator, J. Stuart Blackton as the Father of American Animation.
1908 - French artist, Émile Cohl creates the first animated film, Fantasmagorie, in what will today be referred to as traditional animation methods.
1911 - Winsor McCay start directing more detailed animation requiring teams of animators to draw each frame, coming out with productions such as Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur.
1910s - Animations take on the name of Cartoons, becomes an industry of its own and starts being shown in movie theatres. The cel animation process becomes the dominant method of animation throughout the decade.
1914 - Cel Animation is patented by Earl Hurd and J.R. Bray
1915 - Rotoscoping invented by Max Fliescher.
- The first feature length animation, called Creation, is created by Pinto Colvig. This film is now feared lost
1917 - The second feature length animation, called El Apóstol, is released in Argentina.
1923 - Walt and Roy Disney found Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.
(note: Walt Disney is credited with the popularisation of Storyboarding in the
pre-production stage of animation which is said to have revolutionised the art)
1928 - The first cartoon synchronised with sound, Steam Boat Willy, is created by the Disney Brothers.
1933 - Warner Brother’s Cartoons are founded. They acted as a second pioneer of synched animation and audio productions, or as they were called at the time, Talkies.
(note: Harry Warner opposed the idea of talkies as he didn’t think anybody would want
1934 - Urb Iwrek invented a multiplane camera that allowed more possibilities for cell artists as it gave their art an almost 3 dimensional feel.
1937 - Disney makes their first feature length animation, Snow White. Snow White was made using cell animation and consisted over over 1.5 million frames. Cell animation would go on to be Disney’s signature style for decades to come.
1957 - Hannah Barberra is formed towards the end of the Golden Age of animation and begin developing short cartoon series that go on to be immensely popular with children.
1960’s - Golden age of animation ends as theatrical releases began to lose popularity in favour of television animation.
Rotoscoping (the animation technique of taking film footage and drawing over it to make it appear wholly animated) gains popularity, particularly after the Beatles’ film ‘Yellow Submarine’.
1961 - Sketchpad, a computer drawing program becomes the first computerised tool for animation. It’s created by MIT Student, Ivan Sutherland.
General Motors invents a program that allows them to look at 3D models of their cars from every angle called Design Augmented from Computers (DAC)
1970s - Computer Generated Imagery starts to progress into an effective tool to use to bolster animation.
1982 - Tron becomes the first feature film to include CGI effects. From here CGI becomes increasingly more common and has so up until today.
1995 - Pixar’s Toy Story becomes the first wholly CGI animation film. 3D animation starts to take of 2D in popularity from here.
