There was no one creator of animation, lots of artist were experimenting in different techniques all around the same time. Georges Melies created the technique of we call now Stop Motion, by complete accident when trying to film a bus driving by when his camera broke. The first ever stop motion short film is from England and was an advert for matches. Click here to watch it.
The first ever person to animate people was Blackton. In 1906 he made "Humorous faces" using stop motion to give the illusion that his illustrations on the blackboard are moving. This was mind blowing and was the first ever time the public had ever seen something like this. All animation after this was another version of Blackton's technique.
Next came MicCay also known as the father of american animation, he was a performer and a comic strip artist, he explored animation further and story telling. His rendering and skills in his drawing were extrordanairy. He got into animation as an experiement, he didn't see it as a career. In this animation of his comic strip character Little Nemo, before the animation begins, he really tells the story of how it's made. He was very open about the way he worked and leaves no secrets between the audience and the creator.
MicCay's second film was called "How a mosquito Operates", were he implied personality traites into this Mosquito that takes blood from a sleeping man. Ronnie Scheib says it was one of the scariest films I have ever seen. I even found it hard to watch being a very screemish person, the way that the mosquito swells up when he is taking the blood is horrible but the way it's animated and creates such an effect is amazing.
MacCay was accused of tracing his drawings from photographs or projected live footage because they were so precise. So he made Gertie
Up intul the teens of the 20th century animators made all the production themselves, shoting, directing and photographing eveyrthing. But this all changed by John Randalf Bray, orgionally a reporter and a comic strip artist. He was a businessman and at times dishonest. Bray went to Michay as a reporter claimign he was doing an artical on animation and Michay showed him all his tips and secrets.
Bray came up with a new technique, by creating hundreds of etches on ink tracing paper leaving blank spaces for the moving images, saving hours. The was deminstrated in the animation "The artists dream"
Bray created and implimented a new method known as the cell system, which is the basis of what we use now in digital animation, using cells. In WW1 Bray was imployed by the army and created rotoscoping, when live footage is projected onto paper and traced. Which is also a technique we use now, he made WW1 training videos with this. On Febury 8th 1920 the first ever colour animation was realsed. The mid 1920's Bray began to loose intrest in animation and sold his shares.
The animated version of Felix the kat, based on a comic. The cat rocketed to fame, because children and adults could relate to him. This was the first character to be made into business, and merchandise. An assembelly of artists, etchers and inkers sketched out a new film, once every 2 weeks. with the arriavl of sound cartoons in the late 1920's had started to fade and by the 1930's had stopped production.
Fletchers studio went out of busines but ko ko the clown continued bein distributed by Paramount studios.
Eventually Ko ko the clown was replaced by a sexy new comer Betty Boop, Another Bray successeser was Walter Lance, 1918 and quickly became director general of Bray Productions. By the late 1927 Lance new that Bray studios would be going out of business and moved to hollywood to work with an up and coming animator Disney.
