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Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which film footage is trace by hand, frame by frame.
Originally this was done using a rotoscope, created and patented by Max Fleischer in 1917.
The original rotoscope rear projected single frames of footage onto frosted glass which allowed artists to trace any of the objects within the frame.
This technique was used to create Koko the Clown. Max's brother Dave Fleischer dressed in a clown outfit served as the live-film reference for the character. Rotoscope was also used to create other Fleischer cartoons such as Betty Boop and Popeye.
http://www.furtherfx.com/rotoscope/
He is considered the first true movie cartoon star.
His first appearance was in a short film in the early 1900's called "Feline Follies".
He got his own comic strip (drawn by Otto Messmer) beginning in 1923,and his image soon adorned all sorts of merchandise such as ceramics, toys and postcards.
Most of the early Felix cartoons mirrored American attitudes of the "roaring twenties", Prohibition and alcoholism.
The question of who created Felix remains a matter of dispute. Sullivan stated in numerous newspaper interviews that he created Felix and did the key drawings for the character.
It was not until many years after Sullivan's death that Sullivan staffers credited Otto Messmer with Felix's creation.
http://felixthecat.com/history2.htm
The invention of the technique is generally attributed to Earl Hurd, who patented the process in 1914.
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Generally, the characters are drawn on cels and laid over a static background drawing. This reduces the number of times an image has to be redrawn and enables studios to split up the production process to different specialized teams.
Using this assembly line way to animate has made it possible to produce films much more cost-effectively.
Extra Info:
Earl Hurd actually developed the idea.
Earl worked for John Bray Studios.
Earl loaned patent to John Bray Studios
The studios took the claim to fame for the invention of the process.
John Bray charged other studios to use the process until 1932 when the patent expired and was not renewed.
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/gking/Project2/Web%20Site/Types%20of%20Animation/cel%20animation.htm
Winsor McCay's Gertie The Dinosaur was the first major triumph in designing a character with personality.
In creating the film, McCay came up with a number of techniques that would later become standard in the animation industry.
He used registration marks to keep the background aligned from frame to frame, so that it did not appear to "swim", as often happened in early cartoons.
He avoided some repetitious work by re-using drawings, in what would later be called cycling.
He devised what he called the "McCay Split System", the first occurrence of keyframe animation. Rather than draw each frame in sequence, he would start by drawing Gertie's key poses, and then go back and fill in the frames between.
It consisted of 10,000 drawings!
Gertie was shown as a film in the theaters and also as a multi media event on stage with McCay interacting with the animated Gertie.
McCay was very open about the techniques that he developed. During production of Gertie, he showed all the details to a visitor who claimed to be writing an article about animation. The visitor turned out to be John Randolph Bray, who later patented many of McCay's methods and tried to sue him. McCay prevailed, however, and received royalties from Bray for several years thereafter.
While he wasn't the first person to make an animated cartoon, he was the man who defined the industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertie_the_Dinosaur
Stewart Blackton creates ‘Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’
This film is usually considered the FIRST known example of animation.
He would stop the film, erase one face to draw another, and then film the newly drawn face. (Modern Day Stop Motion)
He was a co-founder of Vitagraph Motion Picture Company. He made a fortune when he sold Vitagarph to Warner Bros, but then lost it all in the Stock Market Crash of 1929.
In 1941, a poor vagrant, he was hit by a bus on Pico Blvd. in Los Angeles and was killed.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/papr:@field%28NUMBER+@band%28animp+4064%29%29
The public soon tired of the novelty (Kinetoscopes) Meanwhile, inventors had perfected the movie projector and the same short Kinetoscope films were shown back-to-back in darkened storerooms, a sheet for a screen, and wooden benches to sit on.
In June of 1905, some 450 people attend the opening day of the world’s first nickelodeon, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and developed by the showman Harry Davis.
The storefront theater boasted 96 seats (folding chairs) and charged each patron five cents.
Nickelodeons (named for a combination of the admission cost and the Greek word for “theater”) soon spread across the country.
Along with one-reel movies (10-12 min. in length), a show might include sing-along songs, skits, vaudeville-type acts, and penny arcades.
Allowed them to compete with Vaudeville houses.
For a time, many people looked down on the movies and the theaters in which they were shown. Movies were considered to be the entertainment fit only for the lower classes. But the biggest complaint of all was the converted storerooms, in which movies were sometimes shown, were dank holes, alive with lice, roaches and other vermin. Furthermore, some people -- especially women -- thought being in total darkness in the middle of a crowd frightening. If the movie industry was to continue to prosper, suitable places had to be provided to show them -- not jerry-rigged storerooms.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-nickelodeon-opens
The first Kinetoscope parlor, owned by the Holland Brothers, opened on April 14, 1894, in New York. Five machines were placed in a row, and a customer could view the films in each for a total of 25 cents. Kinetoscope parlors soon opened around the United States.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist1.html
Developed by Thomas Edison.
Edison called the invention a "Kinetoscope," using the Greek words "kineto" meaning "movement" and "scopos" meaning "to watch."
A Kinetoscope runs 50 ft. of perforated film bearing sequential images back and forth over spools and over a light source with a high-speed shutter. Thanks to the persistence of vision phenomenon, this rapid series of apparently still frames appeared as a moving image.
After depositing a nickel, the patron viewed a 20-second- to one-minute-long movie through a viewing slit in the top of the box.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist.html#O
First patented in the U.S. on on May 16, 1882 by Henry Van Hovenbergh of Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Early flip books consisted of simple drawings stacked in sequential stages of movement with a single staple binding.
Flipbooks were popularized in the early 1900's by the Cracker Jack Company who gave them away as free in-pack prizes.
http://www.flippies.com/flipbook-history/
California's Governor, Leland Stanford and sought out Edweard Muybridge to settle the popularly-debated question of the day: whether all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time during a gallop.
The motion picture was taken at Palo Alto in June of 1878 in the presence of the press. Muybridge photographed a Kentucky-bred mare named Sallie Gardner that Stanford owned.
The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's path. Muybridge used 24 cameras which were 27 inches apart and about one twenty-fifth of a second in time. The shutters were controlled by trip wires, which were triggered by the horse's hooves. The pictures were taken in succession at one thousandth of a second.
The result was a motion picture of a horse lifting all four hooves off the ground at the same time when galloping.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sallie_Gardner_at_a_Gallop
The praxinoscope, invented in 1877 by the Frenchman Charles Reynaud, was the first device to overcome the picture distortion caused by viewing through moving slots.
A band of pictures is placed inside a shallow outer cylinder, so that each picture is reflected by the inner set of mirrors. The number of mirrors is equal to the number of pictures, and the images of the pictures are viewed in the mirrors. When the outer cylinder rotates, the quick succession of reflected pictures gives the illusion of a moving picture.
Using this principle, Reynaud found a way to project the series of pictures onto a screen. He called this the "Theatre Optique."
This changed the medium from a curiosity into entertainment.
http://courses.ncssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/html/exhibit11.htm
British Mathematician , William George Horner invented original.
Called it ‘Daedalum’ meaning ‘Wheel of the Devil’
1860 William F. Lincoln patented it in America and changed the name to ‘Zoetrope’ meaning ‘Wheel of Life’
It’s a similar device to a Phenakistoscope, but with progressive drawings on the inside of a drum-like cylinder.
http://courses.ncssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/html/exhibit10.htm
Developed by Joseph Plateau,
a Belgian Scientist
A circular card with slits around the edge.
Viewer held card up to a mirror and peered through the slits as the card whirled. A series of progressive drawings created a moving object.
Could only be viewed by one person at a time
http://brightbytes.com/collection/phena.html
The invention of the thaumatrope, whose name means "turning marvel" or "wonder turner," has often been credited to the astronomer Sir John Herschel. However, it was a well-known London physicist, Dr. John A. Paris, who made this toy popular.
http://courses.ncssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/html/exhibit06.htm
Peter Mark Roget is credited with a role in the history of cinema, thanks to a paper he presented in 1824 titled "Explanation of an Optical Deception in the Appearance of the Spokes of a Wheel Seen Through Vertical Apertures."
In it he reported his observations of an optical illusion he had witnessed as he saw moving carriage wheels through vertical blinds. He is credited with first noting the phenomenon called "persistence of vision"
Persistence of vision is a commonly-accepted although somewhat controversial theory which states that the human eye always retains images for a fraction of a second (around 0.04 second). This means that everything we see is a subtle blend of what is happening now and what happened a fraction of a second ago.
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot_Roget/index.html
Victorian Parlor toys. Single viewers. Nickelodeons. Multiple viewers. Beginnings of movie theatres. The Bray Studios was the first and foremost cartoon studio, housed in New York City.
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