History of animation

The historical development of techniques and practices that create the impression of movement through successive images, from optical devices to digital and experimental forms.

Phenakistiscope: A spinning disk with slits that shows successive drawings as apparent motion when viewed in a mirror. This nineteenth-century device made the persistence of vision a repeatable public spectacle.
Stop motion: Animation made by photographing physical objects in successive poses, moving them slightly between exposures. It enabled films to animate puppets, models, and everyday objects frame by frame.
Winsor McCay: An American cartoonist and animator known for technically ambitious early films including Gertie the Dinosaur. His performances demonstrated how animation could convey character and timing.
Gertie the Dinosaur: Winsor McCay’s 1914 animated short, featuring a dinosaur that responds to its performer. Its staged interaction made an animated character feel unusually present and individual.
Animated feature film: A feature-length motion picture in which animation creates most or all of the imagery. The form became a central commercial and artistic outcome of animation’s development.
Zoetrope: A rotating cylinder with slits that makes a sequence of images appear to move. Its design turned short drawn cycles into an accessible pre-cinema entertainment.
Cel animation: A technique that layers transparent painted sheets over static backgrounds for frame-by-frame filming. Reusable backgrounds and separated layers made drawn film production more efficient.
Lotte Reiniger: A German filmmaker who pioneered silhouette animation and directed The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Her cut-paper films developed a distinct alternative to drawn animation.
The Adventures of Prince Achmed: Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 feature-length silhouette animation film, among the earliest surviving animated features. It showed that cut-paper silhouettes could sustain a feature-length narrative.
Anime: A style and industry of animation associated with Japan, spanning television, film, and other media. Its international reach made animation histories distinctly transnational.

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