The Famous Names of Animation
- Matthew Leonard
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- Nov 19, 2020
- 3 min read
When referring back to the history of animation we look into the people who changed the way we see animation and has done things to help us now in this present day and in this article I'll be writing down as many names as I can remember who I think are incredibly useful to reflect upon.
Galileo Galilei - His observations at looking at the spots of the Sun every day gave him incredibly interesting results to note down on his sheets of paper, and once he was finished he ended up creating some sort of flipbook animation if you flip though each of his drawings. This is one of the first ever recordings of flipbook animation and considering it was Galileo of all people to record one of the first ever instances of it is something a lot of us wouldn't expect.
Joseph Plateau - Plateau was a Belgian Physicist in the 1800's and was also one of the first people to demonstrate the illusion of moving images to people. To display this to other people he created discs which were called the Phenakistiscope and, once spun would show an animation of some sort. In my opinion, for someone who has essentially created the first ever cases of animation his name is definitely not as known as it should be so I'm definitely glad that I can note it down here and refer onto him in the future.
Richard Balzer - Balzer was an avid collector for pre-cinema collections such as magic lanterns and peep shows and had been collecting them for over 40 years until his unfortunate death 3 years ago. His vast amount of pre-cinema items has been incredibly useful for animators to observe as his website has recorded 100's if not 1000's of them. Although he wouldn't be described as a pioneer for animation his collection of work is just as important as without him getting examples of work from this era would be incredibly difficult,
Charles-Émile Reynaud - Reynaud was the creator of the Praxinoscope, the first instance of projected animation. His invention was essentially a zoetrope with a mirror implemented so it could project to a wider audience. These people were known as 'The Aristocrats' who were essentially the rich people of the era, this includes Balzer. It was implied that animation and cinematography was only for the rich people hence why a lot of the animations shown on screen were targeted to that audience, for example: characters wearing top hats and smoking cigars.
Eadward Muybridge - Muybridge was a photographer born in England in the mid 1800's and was a pioneer in the bridging between still photography and motion. His recordings of capturing still pictures of animals and humans in sequence was something animators referenced heavily; he split each sequence of motion of an animal into different frames and displayed it onto a sheet for reference. Even nowadays I can imagine animators, even myself using Muybridge's pieces for animation references his discoveries were that useful to us.
George Méliès - A name that I've mentioned before in my Pixilation & Time Lapse article, Méliès is a huge name in the film industry as his creation of visual effects is something that is still applied in TV and film to this date. The visual effects that he was using included stop editing, dissolves and double exposures, all techniques mentioned in the video below:
Emile Cohl - Cohl was a French Artist in the late 1800 - early 1900's and created Fantasmagorie which is known as the first ever cartoon animation. Cohl has also been described as the "Father of Animated Cartoon". Considering that animation principles didn't exist over 100 years ago I must say that the animation in this, although messy, is really well done and captures a lot of the principles really well.
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