Aaron Mayper's Animation Paper
Animation From 1798-1892
Though today animation has a rather defined place in the art world, in its earlier days the lines between animation, scientific pursuit, and still painting and photography were less distinct. From Etienne Gaspard Robertson’s Phantasmagoria to Eadweard Muybridge’s instantaneous photographs, animation has held a place in both the scientific and artistic realms, relying on continuous advances in technology as well as creative spirit to bring still pictures to life in new, exciting ways. The story of early animation is one of art and technology being brought together by great minds, advancing both in the process. The Magic Lantern, the Zoetrope, the Praxinoscope, and the Zoogyroscope act as excellent points of interest in the timeline of early animation.
The Magic Lantern, developed by Dutch scientist Christaen Huygens in the mid 1600s, was one of the earliest predecessors of today’s animation (Barber 73). The ancestor of today’s slide projector, the Magic Lantern used glass slides painted with transparent oil paint and held together by bulky wood or metal frames to project images onto curtains and stages (Hayes; Barber 76). Seven basic parts comprised the Magic Lantern. The first was the Lamp, the light source of the projector, originally an oil lamp or candle. This resulted in dim but sufficient light. The second piece, the Reflector, was a mirror which redirected the light produced by the lamp into the third piece, the Condensing Lens. The Condensing Lens focused the light onto the glass slide, much as a magnifying glass focuses the sun’s rays into a more localized point. Finally, the Lens Tube magnified the light focused through the slide, making the image on the projected on the surface appear larger. The remaining basic pieces included the Body, a metal casing, the Base, legs which could readjust the Magic Lantern’s height, and the Smokestack, which released smoke from the Lamp (Hayes). The end result was a projected image, something unusual and exciting for its time.
The Magic Lantern, while rather simple by today’s standards, was hugely popular, and was put to good use by Etienne Gaspard Robertson in his Magic Lantern show, Phantasmagoria. Phantasmagoria consisted of Robertson using his Fantascope, an altered Magic Lantern, to project ghosts and demons in front of his audience’s eyes (Barber 74-75). Using a powerful Argand oil lamp with a tubular wick allowed Robertson’s Fantascope to throw a brighter, more powerful projection onto the screen, meaning a larger audience could see it (Barber 75). A rolling platform gave Robertson the ability to move his Fantascope closer or further away from the screen, making the images of ghosts and skeletons appear to advance and recede (Barber 75). To the audience, the effect was a harrowing illusion of life beyond the grave.
Phantasmagoria premiered in 1798, directly after the French Revolution and in the middle of the Romantic period in France. The public’s uncertainty with the state of their post-revolution country, as well as Romanticism’s focus on the strange and dramatic, made Phantasmagoria an instant hit (Barber 74-75). Held in a dimly lit abandoned chapel, even the atmosphere and setting of Phantasmagoria conjured superstition in the audience’s mind (Barber 73). By projecting the images from behind a screen, Robertson hid the image’s source, making the skeletons and ghosts appear to come to life of their own accord. Sometimes Robertson would project onto smoke so that the figures appeared to float in mid-air (Barber 74-75). Phantasmagoria was in many ways the first large-scale animated production, using projections, music, and even silhouetted dancers to create multi-media entertainment (Barber 77).
Though Phantasmagoria was animation in the sense of paintings brought to life, the movement of the figures was basic and based more on moving a stationary image across the stage than having the figure itself move. This limitation in animation began to disappear in 1825 with Michael Faraday’s discovery of the Persistence of Vision principle (Hayes).
The Persistence of Vision principle states that the eye will retain an image for 1/20th of a second after the image is gone, and led to a wealth of early animation toys (Hayes). Using this principle, John Ayrton Paris created the Thaumatrope, a disk of paper with different images on either side. Two strings attached to the disk were wound, and when the disk was spun the images on either side of the disk merged in the viewer’s eye into a single picture (Hayes). The average Thaumatrope showed a bird on one side and a cage on the other, or a tree with bare limbs on one side and its leaves on the opposite (Hayes). It was this merging of two separate images into one which would lead to animation as we know it today.
William Horner created the Zoetrope in 1834, also based on the Persistence of Vision principle (Hayes). The Zoetrope was a hollow metal drum with sequential images placed around the inside edge and viewing slots above each image. When a viewer spun the device and looked through the slots the images on the opposite side of the drum would merge into a continuous and repeating moving picture (Hayes).
In 1877, Charles Reynaud created the Praxinoscope, based largely on the Zoetrope (Hayes). The difference between the two was that the Praxinoscope had upright mirrors inside the drum, which allowed for a clearer, brighter image than the Zoetrope produced (Myrent 193). Reynaud’s invention became a huge success, and the public’s demand for new animations was enormous (Myrent 193). Between 1877 and 1879 Reynaud painted thirty different filmstrips for the Praxinoscope, selling them in sets of ten each (Myrent 193). In 1879 Reynaud created the “Praxinoscope Theatre,” a box with a hinged top and the Praxinoscope housed within, simulating a staged performance (Myrent 193). But even with the many filmstrips Reynaud produced viewers grew weary of watching short, repetitive loops of animation. In response Reynaud began to work on what would eventually become the Theatre Optique (Myrent 193).
In the mid 1880s Reynaud developed a longer stretch of film that would be run in front of a magic lantern, creating the first projected animation (Myrent 194). Reynaud did this by painting transparent frames strung together by a leather belt (Hayes). When run in front of the Magic Lantern the belt of frames acted as an early predecessor of today’s film reel, resulting in animated films of up to fifteen minutes in length (Myrent 195). The Theatre Optique gave its first show on October 28, 1892, marking a new age in animation in which lengthy stories could be told (Myrent 195). The first show consisted of three segments of about seven hundred frames each with a separate slide and projector for the continuous background (Myrent 194-195). Reynaud, then, was one of the early heralds of animation as a storytelling art form, combining Robertson’s flair for entertaining large audiences with Horner’s moving image.
During Reynaud’s history-making career, however, advances in the science and art of photography were made, as well. In the 1870s, Governor of California Leland Stanford hired nature photographer Eadweard Muybridge to find out whether all of a horse’s legs leave the ground simultaneously when it runs (Dougan 280). After five years Muybridge finally came upon a camera design that had a fast enough shutter speed and film with a short enough exposure time to clearly record a horse in motion. Muybridge set up twelve instantaneous-exposure cameras in a row along a horse track and took pictures as the horse raced past (Dougan 280). When the photos were developed they revealed that all of a horse’s legs do leave the ground simultaneously, but more importantly it sparked new insight into the way movement was perceived, paving the way for more accurate animation, as well as the motion picture.
On May 4, 1880 in San Francisco, Muybridge used the Zoogyroscope (later to be renamed the Zoopraxinoscope) to project the first motion picture (Bell 125). The Zoogyroscope did not, however, use film reels as we do today. Instead, it featured sequential transparent photos on a rotating glass disk through which light was projected (Bell 125). While it was not an animation in the sense of being drawn, it was in the sense that it created a compelling illusion of movement, one that would lead to more complex films and animations in the future.
From Robertson’s Phantasmagoria to Reynaud’s Theatre Optique to Muybridge’s instantaneous-exposure cameras, the late 18th to early 19th century was a stunningly vibrant and exciting time for animation and the illusion of moving pictures. Predicting the huge popularity of animated film and television today, these inventors merged scientific understanding of movement with artistic flair and storytelling to create a compelling art form which has lasted and continued to evolve to this day.
An illustration of Reynaud's Theatre Optique.
Works Cited
Barber, X. Theodore. "Phantasmogorical Wonders: The Magic Lantern Ghost Show in
Nineteenth-Century America." Film History 3.2 (1989): 73-86. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009.
Bell, Geoffrey. "The First Picture Show." California Historical Quarterly 54.2 (1975):
125-38. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009.
Dougan, Robert O. "Review: [untitled]." The Pennsylvania magazine of History and
Biography 97.2 (1973): 279-81. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009.
Eastman House. "Animation--Kit Overview/Eastmanhouse Education." George Eastman
House International Museum of Photography and Film. 2009. Web. 18 Oct. 2009.
Hayes, Laura, and John H. Wileman. "Exhibit of Optical Toys." Exhibit of Optical Toys.
Web. 18 Oct. 2009.
Lawrence, Amy. "Counterfeit Motion: The Animated Films of Eadweard Muybridge."
Film Quarterly 57.2 (2003-2004): 15-25. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009.
Myrent, Glenn. "Emile Reynaud: First Motion Picture Cartoonist." Film History 3.3
(1989): 191-202. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009.
Walters, Jonathan (March 2002). Earlycinema.com—Technology.
http://www.earlycinema.com/technology/index.html. 10/18/09.
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