History of animation production #2: The Silent era

With the advent of the film, animation became more complex and detailed , and gave rise to the form that considered nowadays as the traditional animation - animation created by hand-drawn images. One of  earliest example was the first entirely animated film, the 1906 Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by J. Stuart Blackton—who is, for this reason, considered the father of American animation.

Around that time in Japan, the oldest example of "anime" was created in somewhere around 1907-1911 : "Katsudo Shansin" depicting a boy wearing a sailor suit. 

Over in Europe, the French artist, Émile Cohl, created the first animated film using what came to be known as traditional animation creation methods—the 1908 Fantasmagorie.The film largely consisted of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There were also sections of live action where the animator’s hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look- techniques that is very prevalent in modern day short animation, usually for aesthetic appeal.

The foundation laid, we then see more development on the process of creating a traditional animation. On the technical sides, it was during this period that Cel animation was pioneered as a method to reduce labour in animating, using cut-outs as earliest forms. Pre-cel animations often requires the artist to hand-draw every element of a scene and then photograph it to put into the film, hence making him do it for every frame of the movie, which cause inconsistency in quality , often create shaky lines ( that nowadays would be considered very appealing in some cases). As a method to counter this, Raoul Barre , an American cartoonists, decided to punch holes in the paper and stick 2 pegs on to the table to steady the frames, and so , the peg system was invented and has endured over the century to this day. 

Along that line, as the animation boom started to grow, we see a more industrialized process of creating animation , requiring a large team of animators as opposed to one , giving rise to animation studios. Within them , teams started to became more complex, as the audience was already starting to get familiar with animation already , and so the reliance on shock and curiosity in new technology alone is not gonna help to keep it afloat, so animation needed characters, and stories, and with that the animation groups started splitting into multiple departments : the writers, storyboard artist and the animator,and as we know, it would continue to diverge more as the decade past , with key frame and tweens animators , VFX artists,...

Perhaps one of the most important achievements in the creative process of producing an animation is characterisation , in which the artist create a fully-fledge character with emotions and personality. In 1914, American cartoonist Winsor McCay released Gertie the Dinosaur  an early example of character development in drawn animation. The film was made for McCay's vaudeville act and as it played McCay would speak to Gertie who would respond with a series of gestures. There was a scene at the end of the film where McCay walked behind the projection screen and a view of him appears on the screen showing him getting on the cartoon dinosaur's back and riding out of frame. This scene made Gertie the Dinosaur the first film to combine live action footage with hand drawn animation. McCay hand-drew almost every one of the 10,000 drawings he used for the movie. However as the big studios became more common, artists like McCay started to drop off the public's radar

Following this came a long lines of iconic animation being born. Dave and Max Fleischer , along with inventing the process of rotoscoping, ( a method used very much in the modern Japan horror animated series , Yamashibai and also as the predecessor to motion captures), adopted it into series like Betty Boop and Popeyes. 

 

 

In 1920, Otto Messmer of Pat Sullivan Studios created Felix the Cat. Pat Sullivan, the studio head took all of the credit for Felix, a common practice in the early days of studio animation. Felix the Cat was distributed by Paramount Studios, and it attracted a large audience.Felix was the first cartoon to be merchandised. He soon became a household name

It has to be mentioned however, it is not only the period for development in traditional animation alone, but also the period for other forms of animating, as well, the advancement in other aspect of an animated movie, like film and soundtrack. Stop-motion is technique that draws its history back to the trick films of earlier periods. It is however credited to Albert E. Smith and J.Stuart as the first one to utilised it in a full motion picture. Following that was the puppet animation of Ladilas Starevich , hailed for being the pioneer in not only depicting complex movement in puppet but creating a story that has drama and character filled with motivation, desire and personality , as displayed in his work : "The camera man's revenge".

Soundtrack began to to take roots in animation, as the live artists began to be replaced with synchronised sounds specifically to that animation, all the way to Disney's Steamboat Willie.

So in conclusion , The silent era are credited as the Pioneering Age of animation, and serve as a example as the transition point of animation from a individual art to an industry