What Is Animation

What is animation? Animation is the drawings of the stages of an action shown in the fast succession. To the human eye it would be perceived as a continuous movement. In simpler terms, animation is the art of making inanimate objects appear to move. The first recorded animator is Pygmalion of Greek and Roman mythology. Pygmalion was a sculptor who created a figure of a woman so perfect that he fell in love with her and begged Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, to bring her to life.

Early experimenters discovered the persistence of vision. While working to create conversation pieces for Victorian parlors, they found that these were a popular form of entertainment.

Emile Reynaud was animation's first entrepreneur and the first artist to give personality and warmth to his animated characters. Reynaud adopted William George Horner's invention of the zoetrope. A zoetrope is a rotating drum lined by a band of pictures that could be changed. With the adoption of the invention, he formed what could be projected before a theatrical audience in 1876.

An animator named Otto Messmer invented a wily black cat named Felix in 1918. Felix was made into a star of a series of immensely popular one-reelers. He also became the standard model for cartoon characters because he was simple to draw and could be kept in constant motion.

Walt Disney used Messmer's character Felix as his model, and produced Mickey Mouse. In Mickey's third film, Steamboat Willie, Disney added sound. This made the illusion of life much more complete in 1928.

As animation's first century began to draw to a close, the most exciting developments were found on the anime of Japan. In 1963, Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy debuted in America. Astro Boy was very successful, but Speed Racer was even a bigger success.

Among the anime series, many of them are based on manga, which is a printed comic. One of the many anime series based on a manga