Three early animators

Three early animators

Georges Méliès

I have been told to look into three early animators, first of which is George Melies, he was a french illusionist and film maker who pioneered a lot of technical and narrative developments in cinema.

He accidentally discovered substitution stop trick, which is when something seemingly disappears and reappears somewhere else in the scene. 

His most famous works are "Trip to the moon" which involves some people creating and traveling in a space ship to the moon, and then exploring it, and the other was "The Impossible Voyage", both of which involve some sort of space travel, and are considered some of the earliest sifi films, though they can seem more like fantasy.

Here is an example of his work:

Winsor McCay

 

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator, who was most famous for his comic Little Nemo. His work outshone his contemporaries, and set the standard for animation followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades.

He is most famous for his animation called "Gertie the Dinosaur" which was about a dinosaur that he would give commands to, it is considered the first original character with personality created for an animation, as she would follow commands, disobey them, cry when she was scolded and even give Winsor a ride on her back when he steps into the animation.

Here is a video of Gertie the Dinosaur:

Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger was a silhouette animator and film director, she created short movies using puppets.

One of her most famous animations is called "The Adventures of Prince Achmed" which was made with cutouts of cardboard and thin sheets. 

The plot is that with the help of Aladdin, The fairy of fiery mountain and a magic horse, the title character reclaims the magic lamp and concours the African sorcerer. 

Here it is bellow:

Persistence of vision

Persistence of vision

Persistence of vision is the theory that your eyes keeps the image your eye has captured for half a second, this means that everything we see is a suitable blend of everything we see now and everything we see fractions of a second ago, this can explain the blurry vision people see when something is moving fast.

Example of persistence of vision.

A Zoetrope is an example of persistence of vision, this is because it is a series of images in a circle, inside a cardboard circle with slots cut into it, the idea is that you look through the slits and spin the circle, because of the speed in which you see the pictures spin around, it appears as if the image is movie, this could be because of persistence of vision.

Here is an example.