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Animation is a form of art that is mostly used for entertainment purposes as well as having a place in learning and educational films and advertising; it’s used all around us everyday in different forms.
Since the beginning of time you can see how humans have tried to capture a sense of motion in art. For example this Egyptian wall decoration from around 2000bc shows two people fighting in different positions set out in a kind of comic book form. Also when you look at work such as Leonardo Di Vinci in his most famous illustrations he shows human limbs in different positions giving a sense of motion. Another example would be in the work of futurists for instance in Balla’s work. He was interested in pictorial depiction of light, movement and speed as was outlined by the futurist’s objective to depict movement. His paintings captured figures and objects in motion. He attempted to realize movement by showing them in repeated sequences. “The Dog on a Leash” recreates speed and flight by superimposing images.
As animation is essentially an optical illusion an understanding of the human eye is needed to achieve it. The first demonstration of this was the thaumatrope which was an optical toy that uses what has been called the persistence of vision. This was invented by Paul Roget, one side of the disc shows a bird and the other a cage. When the eye see’s an object it holds onto a picture of that for a fraction of a second while it talks to the brain so while you spin it you can see each picture long enough for the images merge into one. The next invention that furthered animation was the phenakistoscope invented by Joseph Plateau in 1826. It was a circular card with slits around the edge, the viewer would hold this up to a mirror and look through the slits as the card whirled, this then creates the illusion of motion. An invention that then followed this was the zoetrope which worked to the same principle. This was discovered by Paul...