Father of Animation
No one really knows who is the father of animation. Some say its Georges Méliès who experimented a lot to add special effects to his films and he accidentally discovered the stop-motion animation technique where he would stop the camera and ask the actors to freeze and then replace some actors or make some of them ‘vanish’ and then continue filming again. Some say its J. Stuart Blackton who made the first animation clip in 1900 called The Enchanted Drawing; later in 1906 he made another animated film called Humorous Phases of Funny Faces.
Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. by J. Stuart Blackton
Gertie the Dinosaur by Winsor McCay
As far as the theatrical release is concerned I guess it was Gertie the Dinosaur by Winsor McCay in 1914, where McCay used this 2D dinosaur in the backdrop and the dino seemed to listen to him as he performed in sync with it on the stage. McCay would throw an apple at it and the dino would catch and eat it much to the excitement of the audience; well actually McCay used to hide the apple in his palm and the pre-animated dinosaur Gertie caught the animated copy of it. It was all a matter of sync and timing. Gertie is said to be the first animated character with a personality of its own. This seemed to excite the audiences and thus others tried to copy his technique of moving images and came up with their own animated films. And gradually various forms of animation came into existence; I shall write about them in subsequent articles. Adios…
