The moving image, what we now call ‘movie’, works on the principle of persistence of vision. Now, what is interesting about this principle is that it existed as an idea much before photography had advanced its technology enough to create celluloid films. Just like recreation before photography was carried out through drawings and paintings, moving images were first created through drawings as well. So, in theory, animation has existed from a time that predates the creation of films. The idea of movement in drawing goes all the way back to 1500AD, to Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, which shows multiple angles, implying movement. One of the first commercially successful devices was the phenakistoscope- a spinning cardboard disk that created the illusion of movement when viewed in a mirror.

Later with the inventions of sprocket-driven film stock, the stop-motion technique, up-to-the-minute techniques, and visual effects, animation as a creative field have crossed leaps and bounds in both technological and conceptual terms. The change from 2D to 3D has been most visible when one looks at the Disney fairy tale films, as well as the Japanese Anime. There is even a blurring of the lines between the artificial/animated image and the realistic image of the cinema with the current VFX technologies and the introduction of Augmented Reality.

There is another way to look at the history of animation than the technological one. It is the development of the art, the conceptual development itself. An animation is an art form that continuously challenges its creators to push technology so that anything that can be imagined can also be brought to life.

Gertie the Dinosaur, created around 1914, transformed the art of animation in terms of character creation. Winsor McCay’s superb draftsmanship, fluid sense of movement, and great feeling for character gave viewers an animated creature who seemed to have a personality, a presence, and a life of her own. The first cartoon star had been born.

Around 1928, Walt Disney brought out Mickey Mouse. A missing element—sound—had been added to animation, making the illusion of life that much more complete. Later, Disney would add carefully synchronized music, three-strip Technicolor, and the illusion of depth with his multiplane camera. Another close milestone that comes to mind is Disney’s Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, which was the first feature-length film created entirely with hand-drawn animation. It was the first to receive a wide, Hollywood-style release. Disney was determined to give them as profound a dramatic experience as the medium would allow. At the same time of the 20s and 30s, The Fleischer Brothers are working with the rotoscoping technique that they developed to open up the art of animation to a much darker, urban and nightmarish world reigned by the curvaceous torch singer Betty Boop. First animated adult-film is known to be Fritz The Kat, produced in 1964.

Another place to look at for animated history is the Japanese Anime. Films like Miyazaki Hayao’s TV feature Princess Mononoke (1997) are the modern equivalent of the epic folk adventures once filmed Kurosawa. Kon Satoshi’s Perfect Blue (1997) suggests the early Japanese New Wave films of director Oshima Nagisa with its violent exploration of a media-damaged personality. While animated theatrical cartoons had become a regular part of American TV with the Flinstones being the first to take up prime time, with the debut of The Simpsons in 1989, TV animation became home to a kind of social commentary that could push the limits of TV censorship the way live-action films could not. Cartoons like Beavis and Butthead, South Park, and today Arthur, Bojack Horseman and Rick and Morty, are carrying that legacy even further.

All of these cartoons use different kinds of animation techniques to get their points across. CGI revolutionized animation industry after the 1980s. And as digital imaging techniques continue to improve in quality and affordability, it becomes increasingly difficult to draw a clear line between live-action and animation. The Marvel Studios are more special effects than anything else, and yet the illusion is so realistic it feels like it could be touched. Almost no films are free of some kinds of special effects or animation today, even if they’re not exploring magical or fantastical themes. Such techniques are no fewer creations of the animator’s art than were Gertie or Mickey Mouse or Snow White.

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