Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Happy Birthday Animation:
This Thursday, April 6th from 6pm to 9pm, at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive (2114 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank, CA) we are holding a birthday party for the film animation process. We are marking the date from the release date of J. Stuart Blackton`s Edison film Humorous Phases of a Funny Face.
Of course, marking the birth of animation is a hard trick. Filmmakers in all countries backdated their first works to claim that title. Talented people told big lies to claim the name.
I have video of a 2,000 year old Egyptian tablet that has been filmed under an animation stand and it sure looks animated to me. As does the animation stand captured works of Eadweard Muybridge.
Cave painters tried to show movement in their paintings, And Emile Reynaud with his 1892 Theotre Optique, all hand painted on celluloid, was surely animated but it was not done on film.
Winsor McCay boldly claimed on the titles of most of his animated films that he invented the animated process with his his first animation the 1911 Little Nemo. But Emile Cohl (Fantasmagorie 1908) did not believe McCay and neither do I. The fact that Blackton was co-director on McCay`s first animation (read this as teacher) also tends to put the lie to this overblown McCay title grab.
Why Blackton? Why his 1906 Humorous Phases of a Funny Face as the first film animation? There had been object animation before, movement of real world objects between frames. And that is surely a type of animation. Blackton himself had done that as had many others.
It is the cut out arm transformation in Funny Face that does it for me. I am a huge Emile Cohl fan, I staunchly defend Cohl as the first working animator and a massively undervalued founder of this process I love so much. I truly think that there should be an Annie Award named after Emile Cohl. But all that aside even I have to admit that this J. Stuart Blackton 2-frame cut out replacement arm movement is animation.
Blackton may have treated Humorous Phases of a Funny Face as just another one of his trick films and he may not have pursued his discover but he sure as hell did the first known film animation.
J. Stuart Blackton influenced the animation works of Emile Cohl and Winsor McCay. And these 2 influenced everybody else who followed. So this Thursday we are holding a birthday party.
This Thursday, April 6th from 6pm to 9pm, at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive (2114 W. Burbank Blvd., Burbank, CA) we are holding a birthday party for the film animation process. We are marking the date from the release date of J. Stuart Blackton`s Edison film Humorous Phases of a Funny Face.
Of course, marking the birth of animation is a hard trick. Filmmakers in all countries backdated their first works to claim that title. Talented people told big lies to claim the name.
I have video of a 2,000 year old Egyptian tablet that has been filmed under an animation stand and it sure looks animated to me. As does the animation stand captured works of Eadweard Muybridge.
Cave painters tried to show movement in their paintings, And Emile Reynaud with his 1892 Theotre Optique, all hand painted on celluloid, was surely animated but it was not done on film.
Winsor McCay boldly claimed on the titles of most of his animated films that he invented the animated process with his his first animation the 1911 Little Nemo. But Emile Cohl (Fantasmagorie 1908) did not believe McCay and neither do I. The fact that Blackton was co-director on McCay`s first animation (read this as teacher) also tends to put the lie to this overblown McCay title grab.
Why Blackton? Why his 1906 Humorous Phases of a Funny Face as the first film animation? There had been object animation before, movement of real world objects between frames. And that is surely a type of animation. Blackton himself had done that as had many others.
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It is the cut out arm transformation in Funny Face that does it for me. I am a huge Emile Cohl fan, I staunchly defend Cohl as the first working animator and a massively undervalued founder of this process I love so much. I truly think that there should be an Annie Award named after Emile Cohl. But all that aside even I have to admit that this J. Stuart Blackton 2-frame cut out replacement arm movement is animation.
Blackton may have treated Humorous Phases of a Funny Face as just another one of his trick films and he may not have pursued his discover but he sure as hell did the first known film animation.
J. Stuart Blackton influenced the animation works of Emile Cohl and Winsor McCay. And these 2 influenced everybody else who followed. So this Thursday we are holding a birthday party.
