Early Animation

Georges Méliès

Georges Méliès (1861-1938) was a French illusionist and filmmaker, famous for films like 'a Trip to the Moon' and 'the Impossible Voyage' -he made films which often involved special effects and hand colouring between 1896 and 1913. One of his early films: 'the Haunted Castle' is considered to be the first horror film ever made and is the first known film to also have special effects, these were done by stoping the camera and replacing things in shot or moving characters to look like they have appeared or disappeared.

Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay (1867/71-1934) was the first cartoon animator; inspired by his son's flip book, he used rice paper to draw each frame of animation onto. McCay spent most of his times as a comic book artist and political cartoonist, though his animation later consumed so much of his time that he was forced to leave his illustrative career.

'His Best Customer'

His first animation was called Little Nemo (1911) and featured McCay's comic book character come to life for the first time. By 1914 he had created How a Mosquito Operates and Gertie the Dinosaur, in the latter film McCay had perfected his animation technique to the extent that he could draw a detailed background for every frame and developed 'inbetweening'-where the first and final frames of a movement are drawn first with all the inbetween frames drawn after, to make the animation smoother and more efficient; unfortunately, McCay suffered badly financially as his early animations required alot of paper and he had little funding, he would not patent his animation techniques either- meaning that when John Randolph Bray posed as a journalist investigating animation, he stole his methods and tried to sue (unsuccessfully). McCay gave up his animating career to return to newspaper cartoons after eleven films.

Lotte Reiniger

Charlotte Reiniger (1899-1981) was a German Silhouette animator.

As an animator, she began with animating wooden rats for the Pied Piper of Hamelin. She later discovered that using silhouettes, she could animate limbs on paper cutouts of people. One of the first animated films (and the oldest surviving) was produced by Reiniger: The Adventures of Prince Achmed- although it took half a year to release, at its premiere in Paris, it was well received. It took three years to make with 24 frames per second. After this, she went on to direct the adaptation of Dr. Doolittle and His Animals. Along with her animations, she directed many live action films. Her third attempt at making an animated feature was abandoned due to copyright issues, but she continued making short films.

Walt Disney

Disney produced movies in the 1920s featuring the character: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (until he lost the rights to the character), he continued experimenting with similar animal characters and produced Steamboat Willie in 1928. It saw the third outing of Disney's trademark characters: Mickey and Minnie Mouse and was one of the first animations to feature synchronised sound. The use of sound in Disney's cartoons proved successful.