With dozens of high profile animated films being released on an annual basis it’s sometimes easy to take it all for granted. In 2016 alone, moviegoers can expect feature length animated productions from the likes of Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar, Illumination, Blue Sky, and several others. But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, at the start of the 20th century the art of animated film making was only just beginning to take shape.
Walt Disney is often associated with the early days of animation, however in actuality the very first ventures into the animated frontier were made nearly 3 decades before Disney by a man named James Blackton. Blackton’s 1900 film entitled The Enchanted Drawing, despite being under 2 minutes in length and not actually being a purely animated feature, contained the first ever animated sequence recorded on standard picture film.
The notion of an inanimate drawing coming to life was magical
Viewers were captivated; the notion of a seemingly inanimate drawing of a man’s face coming to life was quite simply magical. It seems trivial now, but back then nothing like it had ever been seen before. Blackton would later go on to create the first entirely animated film in 1906 with Humouros Phases of Funny Faces. Ironically, despite actually being the first of its kind, the film didn’t use what would come to be known as “traditional animation” and instead opted for a form of stop motion. Humorous Phases then, is actually more of a precursor to Wallace and Gromit than Mickey Mouse.
Blackton’s success did have other long lasting effects however. Many other artists were inspired after seeing Blackton’s work and went on to create their own cartoons. The first of these which saw monumental success was Gertie the Dinosaur. Released in 1914 by Winsor McCay, the film featured a sauropod named Gertie who went on a journey to explore the outside world and was more intricate than previous animation in that it actually featured a fleshed out character. Gertie appeared to have emotions; she was inquisitive, she could get angry, she could be sad, she somehow seemed real despite not actually existing.
THE AIM TO TELL NEW STORIES HAS ALWAYS BEEN A CONSTANT FOR THE ART FORM
This notion of having “cartoon characters” subsequently exploded in later decades; beginning with Felix the Cat, by the end of the 1920s the world had been introduced to the likes of Popeye, Oswald the Rabbit, and of course Mickey Mouse. Mickey’s 1928 debut film – Steamboat Willie by Walt Disney– was actually the first animation to feature sound and was successful in propelling Disney towards a long and successful career, and even more successful legacy. Then later in the 1930s, the trend continued with the introduction characters such as Betty Boop, Donald Duck, and Bugs Bunny with the rest of the Looney Tunes gang. However it was not until 1937, with the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, that the first ever technicolour feature length film was made. The influence of Snow White was unbelievably far reaching; it spawned nearly 8 decades of traditionally animated films, and amazingly still manages to hold up as a piece of entertainment today.
The 20th century was also defined by technological advancement, so it isn’t just traditionally animated feature length films that have come about in the last hundred years. With the advent of television in the early 1950s, animated TV shows such as The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show met with great success. In particular Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones, which having released in 1960, was a monumental hit. Also, very rarely is traditional animation even used in mainstream cinema anymore as computer generated films have taken precedence ever since the release of Pixar’s Toy Story in 1995. In being the first every 3D film entirely made up of CG animation, it initiated a new era in filmmaking. In fact, virtually every new major animated film today is composed of CGI. Without Toy Story there would be no Finding Nemo, Shrek,
It’s truly a marvel to see just how far animation has come. The plucky little films that pioneered the industry have now become these massive multimillion pound blockbusters. However, from the minimalist black and white flipbook animation of Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914, to the near photorealistic settings of Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur in 2015, the aim to tell stories through new and innovative methods has always been a constant for the art form, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.