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The Art of Margo Sivin | Shanefessor | December 2010

For nearly a century, animation has been a unique influence on the human experience. From an early age, American children watch Disney Princesses sing with woodland creatures, Bugs Bunny tease Daffy Duck and Tom chase Jerry, not to mention the various commercial business that have utilized animation in marketing and artists as a form of expression. Animator and educator Howard Beckerman writes, “Pictures on the screen move in time and, unlike pages in a book, are not meant to be studied individually. This matter of time directly relates to the spaces between drawings and their duration in a sequence. Time is the soul of animation, and it is animators respect for timing that casts them as actors.” (Beckerman 5)

According to Merriam-Webster, to animate or be animated is to give life, or act in a spirited way. In a parallel leap forward with live-action motion pictures, animation brought drawings, clay, and other objects to life and gave way to a distinct form of art and entertainment. Animation is fairly young art form; it piggybacked its way through history on artists, toymakers, illustrators and scientists. Animation, like other scientific and artistic breakthroughs and movements of the 20th century, did not exist in a vacuum: animation influenced, and was influenced by artistic expressions like design, music, literature, and art. The following research represents mere snapshots and highlights in the .

EARLY BEGINNINGS: Bringing pictures to life If the word “animation” refers to pictures in motion, animation began with the attempt to create motion in still paintings found in caves. But while the “blurred” legs of animals suggest motion, the beginnings of modern moving pictures came in the form of toys like the thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, and stoboscope in the Eighteenth century. Animation and movies were made possible because of the combined use of sequential images, perforated, flexible strips, lenses, shutters, and detants. The following invenetions contributed one, or many, of these necessary elements (Beckerman 10). The thaumatrope, invented by Dr. William Henry Fitton, is a disc like a large coin with different images on each side with two strings attached on the right and left sides. When twirled quickly, the two images appear to overlap. This concept of merging imagery prompted The Thaumatrope further inquiry by John Herschel, Michael Faraday, Peter Mark Roget Illustrated by Howard Beckerman (Beckerman 5–6). 1 Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau (1801–1883) of Brussels created the phenakistoscope and Ritter von Stampfer (1792–1864) of Vienna created the stroboscope. These similar novelty items were wheels with slits and a series of closely related designs that, when spun facing a mirror, appeared to move. Plateau drew the designs himself, which makes him the world’s first animator. Most artists and illustrators who made designs for the phenakistoscope, stroboscope, and later zoetrope, were generally anonymous animators (Beckerman 6). In 1892 in Paris, Emile Reynaud replaced viewing slits of the zoetrope with rectangular mirrors that faced the drawings and revolved as the drum spun. He dubbed his invention the praxinoscope, expanding it into an elaborate theatre attraction via mirrors and lenses and a belt of painted transparencies, called theatre optique. Accompanied by appropriate sounds, the projecting praxinoscope was a forerunner of what would become screen animation.

PHOTOGRAPHY’S AID Following the invention of photography and the first photograph by Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1826, the zoetrope progressed to include lantern slides (Beckerman 8). In 1872, Eadweard James Muybridge began photographing animals and people in motion using twelve cameras with shutters tipped off in sequence. Beckerman states, “The importance of Muybridge was in the fact that they were continuous shots of actual motion, not posed stills,” as opposed to photographs previously depicting motion (8). Inspired by Muybridge, Parisian physiologist Etienne Jules Marey devised a gunstock camera that took a series of photographs on a revolving plate through one lens. He exposed twelve exposures per (top) The Zoetrope second. By 1888, he had developed a new camera design that could Illustrated by Howard Beckerman take successive pictures on a moving roll of celluloid film. Eadweard Muybridge, 1872 The first true movie is generally credited to Thomas Edison and his The Lumiere Brothers Cinematographe invention of the kinetoscope viewing machine in West Orange, New Illustrated by Howard Beckerman Jersey. The camera that recorded motion, the kinetograph (1894), was a large apparatus that pulled the film through horizontally and was controlled by an enormous electric motor (Beckerman 8). The kinetograph was only for one person to view. The Lumiere brothers Louis and Auguste created the cinematographe, which was a portable camera that also served a projector. This device allowed films to be made in any location, and to be shown to a large audience. It was the invention of the projector that opened the path to longer and more complex motion pictures.

THE FIRST ANIMATED FILMS & NEW TECHNOLOGY The first film to purposely employ drawn animation was James Stuart Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces in 1906. The film uses frame-by-frame shooting technique to make blackboard drawings 2 come alive. There was no story, only simple animation like smoke curling from a cigar and an eye blinking. Blackton’s early experiments in animation inspired others and encouraged further developments (Beckerman 16). In 1909, Blackton and his partner Albert Smith founded the Vitagraph Corporation of American. In early drawn animation, two elements were common: the first was the cartoonists hand as instigator of the animation (which was usually a cutout of a still photograph); and the second was the stealing of ideas or imitation. Largely considered to be the first animator, Emile Cohl, a French caricaturist, dedicated his life to designing, photographing, and animating his drawings. Cohl is an excellent example of animators working closely with other artists. His background would later influence his animation work. His mentor, political caricaturist Andre Gill, introduced him to a bohemian circle including artists, poets, journalists, and critics that would eventually belong to the symbolist movement (Crafton 63). Cohl became part of a group obsessed with insanity as an aesthetic issue, the Incoherents. Beginning in 1882, their group organized charity balls and exhibitions of their strange work that attracted artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and Jules Cheret. Before he began working on at the age of 44, Cohl was a popular graphic artist, illustrating books, songsheets, and magazines. Cohl’s cartoons beginning in 1908 features childlike white outlines of characters on a black background, which was a nod to Blackton’s chalkboard technique (Beckerman 18). Cohl also made puppets and paper cutouts for his films dedicated to the Incoherents. Cohl was one of the first to bring the necessary qualities of intellect, imagination, strong work ethic, and the obsessive love of drawing that would mark other great animators (Crafton 61–64). Until just before the start of WWI, animation was a sideline occupation. Hoping for success in the steady stream of cartoon reels to movie theatres, two entrepreneurial newspaper cartoonists, Raoul Barre and John Randolph Bray organized studios in New York. Certain technical problems needed to be solved, however, before animated shorts could begin cranking out. The first challenge, maintaining constant position of drawings as they were being sketched and then shot was solved by the Peg System. Raoul Barre came up with the idea to punch holes in drawing paper that were then set upon pegs set into the drawing board. A secondary challenge, quivering backgrounds, was solved by Cels. Earl Hurd was the first to employ celluloid, the material that ran through cameras. First, the Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, 1906 backgrounds were drawn on the celluloid sheets (cels) and placed James Stuart Blackton over the animation, and later, characters were traced onto cels. This Fantasmagore, 1908 opened the door for more detailed backgrounds and rendering of Emile Cohl tones. Eventually Hurd and Bray merged, creating the Bray-Hurd Newspaper cartoon, 1938 Process Company, which licensed out the technique and collected This cartoon illustrates animation’s debt to Cohl, royalties well into the 1930s. who was largely unknown at the time of his death in 1938. Although some still considered animation an art form, Bray made animation an assembly-line, factory style job. Among these were artists employed in the assembly lines were those who would become 3 producers in their own right, like Max and Dave Fleischer. The Fleischers created a projection-tracing device, the rotoscope, in 1917. They filmed live-action sequences and then traced single-frame projections of it. This technique made animating considerably faster, as well as smoother. They introduced the Koko the Clown series, whose hallmark was the combination of the characters with photographic backgrounds. Dave acted as Koko’s model (Beckerman 23).

STUDIOS AND FULL-LENGTH FEATURES In the 1920s, animation in the United States was centered around production in New York studios. Cartoons at this time had a specific look: inked in heavy black, with white, mask-like faces. They moved on a white plane with occasional black lines showing scenery. From 1919 to 1930, Otto Messmer and Pat Sullivan’s was the number one crowd-pleaser. Through clever animation based on Charlie Chaplin, Felix could think and solve problems. For instance, using his tail, he could form a telescope. During this time, animation was never as serious as the feature-film that seceded it. One man would change that: . Walt Disney’s success came from a mouse. Mickey’s first success was with Steamboat Willie, Disney’s third short, but the first with sound. In the 1930s, color cartoons were shown in theatres in between black and white features, newsreels, and advertisements. Disney’s 1933 , , was a landmark in animation, and featured the first hit tune from an animation, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” Disney sought to raise the standards of animation. His skill with combining a winning story, sound effects, music, and color made him a man difficult to match. and the Seven Dwarfs, opening to Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat, 1977 worldwide acclaim in December 1937, showed doubters that a full- Vicking Eggling length feature animated film could indeed hold the public’s attention. Snow White, 1937 A reviewer for The New York Times said, “If you miss it, you’ll be Walt Disney/RKO Radio Pictures missing the ten best pictures of 1938” (Beckerman 45) A 3-year A painter working on Pinocchio, 1940. effort that ran over budget, Snow White not only earns a place in Walt Disney Productions/PhotoFest history because it was the first full-length animation featuring sound and color, but because it was a beautiful and captivating film. At the 1939 Oscars, Walt Disney was given a special award, which read, “To Walt Disney for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, recognized as a significant screen innovation which has charmed millions and pioneered a great new entertainment field for the motion picture cartoon” (Academy Awards Database). During the production of Snow White, the mostly under 25, high- school educated “girls,” as Disney paternalistically referred to them, worked to exhaustion. Behind Disney’s first animated features–Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, , –there were as many as 100 young women working as inkers and painters, making his dream a reality. It was the forgotten armies of women working for Disney who painted “minor miracles that would become part of our collective visual consciousness: the curve of Mickey’s ears, the 4 sympathetic lines of ’s face, the flap of ’s trunk, the downy spots on Bambi’s back, or perhaps the most storied, the fairy dust that has endured as a symbol of enchantment, if only we wish hard enough” (Zohn). The “girls,” as Walt paternally referred to them, worked double time (logging up to 85 hours in one week) and had no time off. The budget was so tight for a couple of weeks the girls did not get paid; Walt joked that he had to “mortgage Mickey and Minnie” (Zohn). Still, the girls remained upbeat. Most people felt lucky to be working for Disney.

ART’S INFLUENCE Although the major players like Disney, MGM, and Warner Brothers set the visual standard for animation and are most remembered for the animations of the time, there are several fringe groups and films worth noting. The world-wide effects of animation in combination with the artistic zeitgeist of the time (cubism, abstract, futurism) can be seen in works coming out of Europe. Marcel Duchamp and Giacomo Balla painted overlapping imagery to express motion. During the 1920s, graphic designers Vicking Eggling and Hans Richter joined Walkter Ruttmann and Berthold Bartosch in studying tempo and rhythm in conjunction with animation (Beckerman 30–31). Beginning in 1930, animators who had been exposed to the words of Braque, Matisse, and Picasso began applying what they saw to animation. The 1934 French production Joie de Vivre, designed by Hector Hoppin and Anthony Gross, exemplified this influence. Sequences from Disney’s Dumbo and various sequences from shows the Disney animator’s slight inclination during the period (Beckerman 54). One of the simplest and most charming short animations came from one of the biggest players in animation: Warner Brothers’ Chuck Jones. The creator of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and dozens of other beloved animated heroes also made a short, modernist animation. 1965s The Dot and The Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics, is Norton Juster’s story of a straight line who falls in love with a red dot. Using simple geometry, occasional squiggles, flowers, and a simple narration and score, The Dot and The Line won an Academy Award for (animated) in 1965. The Academy Award for Short Film (animated) was added to the 5th Academy Awards in 1932. The addition of Animated (top two) Symphonie Diagonale, 1924 Feature Film was added for the 74th Academy Awards in 2001 Vicking Eggling (Dreamworks’ Shrek won.) The only two animated films to be nominated for Best Motion Picture are Beauty and the Beast (1991) Dumbo, 1941 Walt Disney/RKO Radio Pictures and Up (2009). Animation Studios is the most successful in the Animated Feature Film category. Out of the seven feature The Dot and The Line, 1965. Chuck Jones films Pixar made between 2001¬–2009, all have been nominated and only two have lost (Academy Award Database). Additionally, received an Achievement Award in 1995, for “his inspired leadership of the Pixar team, resulting in the first feature-length computer-animated film” (Academy Awards 5 Database). Although widely praised as one of the best films of 2008, the cautionary environmental tale of WALL-E was not nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. The first animated film to be nominated for Foregin Language Film was Waltz with Bashir in 2008. Israeli director Ari Folman used stark black and yellow sketches and photo- realistic drawings to depict his time as a young soldier in Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon (“Animated Movies”). Another artist gaining critical acclaim for his animation is South African artist William Kentridge. One of his most well-known characters is Soho Eckstien, a business tycoon, and his alter-ego Felix Teitelbaum. The film Johannesburg, the 2nd Greatest City After Paris was created on the city’s one-hundredth anniversary and addresses the social problems of apartheid (“William Kentridge”). These films demonstrate the variety of animation’s uses: an animated film can be both educational and artistic, entertaining and informative. Interestingly enough, though the animation targeted to adults (such as , , South Park, and ) is often visually similar to children’s animation, the content is strikingly different. Since its popularity in the beginning of the 20th century, animation has permeated every aspect of our culture. Animation has expanded from simple animating of drawings to claymation, stop- motion, and computer generated imagery (CGI). More than ever, the phrase “graphic design” encompasses so much more than traditional print design. Animation is frequently seen on graphic design blogs and websites. In our ever-expanding world of design, it is clear animation certainly has a place.

WORKS CITED

Academy Awards Database. 2010. Web. 04 Dec. 2010. “Animated Movies: Not Just for Kids.” TIME Magazine. 21 Nov. 2008. Web. 04 Dec. 2010. Beckerman, Howard. Animation: The Whole Story. New York: Allworth Press. 2003. Print. Crafton, Donald. Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928. Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1982. Print. “William Kentridge: Five Themes.” Museum of Modern Art. 24 Feb. 2010. Web. 03 Dec. 2010. Zohn, Patricia. “Coloring the Kingdom.” Vanity Fair Magazine. (top) Waltz with Bashir, 2008 Vanity Fair, Mar. 2010. Web. 01 Dec. 2010. Ari Folman Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris, 1989. William Kentridge

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