History of animation

 The animation (animation) - from the Latin "anima" - the soul, it means empathy or some kind of  “reanimation”.

Cartoons, animation, cartoon movies, animated films - kind of cinematographic art, which created by time-lapse photography of successive phases of the drawing (graphic or painted animation) or volume (volume or puppet animation) objects.

Animators create the art of animation.

The first attempts to capture the movement in the figures refer to the paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are depicted with multiple legs, overlapping each other.

In Shahr-e Sukhteh (Iran) was found an earthen jar, whose age is estimated to be 5,000 years old. On the walls of the vessel made ​​five pictures kid on the move.

In Egypt there were found drawings, which referred to 2000 year BC. There was an idea to name these drawing as the examples of 1st animation, but at that time didn't exist special equipment which could show the drawings in motion.

History of animation started on 20th of July 1887 in France. Charles-Émile Reynaud self-taught engineer created and presented the 1st Praxinoscope. on 28 October 1892 he projected the first animated film in public, Pauvre Pierrot, at the Musée Grévin in Paris. This film is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used.

Emile Reynaud, the cartoon "The patient Pierrot", 1892	Praksinoskop Emile Reynaud, 1877, France

First cartoons were up to fifteen minutes, drawn and painted by hand pantomime lasting. Even then, could be applied sound, synchronized with the image. Raynaud also created cartoons, where in production were used photos and drawings. Later on others made the contribution to the development of animators, creating paintings in a variety of genres and techniques.

Active development of animation started at the beginnings of 20th century. In one moment several independent people separate to each other started to create animation.

Georges Méliès accidentally invented the technique of shooting “stop-motion”. The point of this technique is that Méliès shot the scene than changed the next scene and shot again and etc. Than after quick changing frames appeared the animation effect.

George Mellis, "Rubber Head", 1902	Winsor McKay, "Dinosaur", 1914

James Stuart Blackton created animated smoke in 1906.

Winsor McCay created the first cartoon in 1906.

Walt Disney was the first who used sound in animation. He was pioneer who used  colour in animation. One of the most reasonable Disney’s inventions was animation stand which helped to get to receive the effects of parallax, elongated shapes of figures, the depth and fuzziness.
At this studio was created many famous characters Mickey Mouse, Pluto, Goofy etc. Commercial successes of animators spread all over the world and inspires people to open animation studios.

To 1930 there were a lot of running animation studios such as Universal Pictures, Paramount, Warner Brothers etc which working till now.

Animated studios of 60th-70th whose used computer technology were opened by scientists from universities and artists. First researching/discoveries of computer graphics were in 1963 based on Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) when Ivan Edward Sutherland invented Sketchpad, an innovative program that influenced alternative forms of interaction with computers.

Walt Disney, "Steamer Willie", 1928	Walt Disney, "Flowers and Trees", 1932

In the USSR first results in computer animation were associated with name Yuriy Bayakovskii. In 1990 at SIGGRAPH ACM Association gave him an award "Computer Graphics Pioneer". Now Yuri Matveevich is a head at MGU laboratory of graphics and media at the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics (graphics.cs.msu.su) and at that time work at the Institute of applied mathematics named by Mstislav Keldysh (Academy of Sciences), for many years he was a head of the department of computer graphics there. In 1964 Yuriy made the first modeling of plasma flow over a cylinder in collaboration with physicist Tamara Sushkevich. That was  the first operation in the USSR according to "computer graphics". In 1971 Institute of applied mathematics developed advanced software for creation the computer movies and created the camera with captures the frames from the display. Using this system soon was made ​​two spectacular animations - a visualisation the robot and modeled the interaction of two galaxies.

In state Utah at the beginning of 70th there were some important works in animation: animated hand and face by Ed Catmull (1972); walking and speaking figure created by Barrie Wexler (1973),  speaking face by Fred Park (1974). Today it seems that quality of animation was primitive but at that time it was impressive.

Ivan Sutherland, "A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System", 1963	Edwin Catmull, CEO of "Pixar", Lecture, 2010

At the end of 70th Technological institute of New York begun working on project of creation film «The works», completely constructed on computer using 3D animation.
Project wasn’t finished but some fragments were shown during conferences SIGGRAPH. These fragments demonstrated high quality of visualization, articulated figures and interacting objects. During creation «The works» it was used the system BBOP - 3D animation system of articulated figures.

At the beginning of 80th contribution to the animation development made Daniel Tolman’ laboratory - computer animation “Dream Flight”, “Tony de Peltrie”, “Rendez - vous a Montrual”). Among others who influenced on animation were: Ed Emshwiller who showed moving textural maps in Sunstone; Jim Blinn created animated “Voyager”; Don Greenberg created architecture roundabout way for Cornell University and others.

Animation "Tony de Peltrie", 1985	Animation "Rendez-vous in Montreal

In 1980 technical development made headway. At this time graphical programs become more compoundю. Turner Whitted introduced concept “Ray tracing” with the elimination of errors in sampling; Nelson Max produced several movies about molecules and one with animated waves; Loren Carpenter showcased his software for generating and rendering fractally generated landscapes.

Is started to be shown movies with increasingly used computer special effects: simulated tornado using particle system, vampire transformation into flying characters, characters with no legs, etc.

The film “Young Sherlock Holmes” (1986) was the first film, which contained artificial character.

Jim Blinn animation «Voyager» for NASA, 1986	The movie "Jurassic Park," 1997

In 1993 film “Jurassic Park” presented animated models of dinosaurs, in 1995 was shown film “Jumanji” with models of real and made-up animals.
The important trend in computer animation was the creation of an artificial person, indistinguishable from real. The Pioneers were movies «Tony de Peltrie» (1985), «Rendez-vous a Montreal» (1988) and others. In these films the quality of animation was poor that was obviously for audience that characters not real, because of that computer heroes had secondary roles.

Today's progress in models of light and texture makes it possible to design more realistic people. At the end of XX century appeared new animation technology - motion capture. Motion capture object some technical measuring equipment.

The movie "Avatar", 2009	The movie "Pirates of the Caribbean", 2011

The method of motion capture used in production CGI cartoons, and for creating special effects in films. It’s popular in video games production. Using this method in 2004 were created cartoons “Polar Express” (model - Tom Hanks), “Final Fantasy”, “The Lord of the Rings” model - (Andy Serkis). In 2006 - 2011 using this technology were created “Renaissance”, “Beowulf”, “Christmas Carol”,  “Avatar”, ”Harry Potter”.

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