Pioneers

Eadweard Muybridge Edison (Kinetoscope)

Born: 9^th April 1830.

Died: 8^th May 1904.

British.

Eadweard is known as the father of the motion picture. His work has inspired many with his work of “The Horse In Motion” this is regarded the first ever animation or moving picture. He was involved in a big coach crash when he was just 30 he got thrown out of the coach hitting his head on a rock. This crash changed his life completely he struggled mentally and physically he had symptom’s such as; double vision, confused thinking and problems with his taste and smell.

The Horse In Motion:

He done the work for Stanford University as they argued a horse was airborne when running. Edison set up wet plates that produced highly unexposed plates. Which proved Stanford’s theory was correct all four legs did leave the floor.

The Zoopraxiscope:

Eadweard invented a product that projected his work to a

screen so you could argue that he created the first projector.

He created the illusion of movement by; setting up a series of fifty cameras parallel to the racetrack. Doing this connected their electrically controlled shutters to trip wires laid across the track, he set the cameras up so each one automatically took the picture when the horse ran passed.  

After researching Edward I am truly shocked how creative the man was. He created a motion system in the eighteen hundreds his work spans across the whole world and in many industries he created trip wires, animations and even projectors.

His work is used in security systems where if you stand on a certain object it trips alerting guards and turning on lights and cameras.

The intended audience for his work nowadays is historians and people interested in how photography and technology started. Back in the eighteen hundreds it would have been scientists like Stanford. His work made theory’s become facts he started a revolution of animation as people like Tim Burton would not be the people they are today. I feel this man was a genius and hasn’t had the fame he deserves he has created so much when resources wasn’t there for him. It could be improved nowadays by more fps. 

The Lumière Brothers

_{The Lumière Brothers were called Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean. They were both born in France. In their early years they would work in their fathers photographic shop. The boys also made improvements to that industry; the dry plate process. When their father retired they concentrated on moving images. The Lumière brothers patented the first ever portable motion picture camera, film processing unit and projector they called it the cinematographe this had 3 inventions in just 1 machine. The Brothers famously said that the "cinema is an invention without any future" - How wrong were they! The Lumière Brothers have changed everyone’s lives forever especially in the 21st century  as people are still using the Lumière Brothers ideas; mobile phones with cameras and video playback, camcorders, webcams. All of these inventions may not have been around if it wasn’t for the Lumière Brothers. The Lumière Brothers films lasted just short of a minute. The camera would stay in the same position throughout the film. The Lumière Brothers also created the first ever film poster.  Many criticised the Lumière brothers as they apparently "copied" Edward Muybridge's Kinetoscope but it did vary in many ways including weight and size. Muybridge's Kinetoscope had many limitations; it could not be moved out of the film studios. Where as the cinematographe could be moved anywhere. When the Lumière Brothers first screened their film in 1895 they didn’t realise how much of an impact they would have on everyone’s lives as some say this was the start of the cinema. Most of the Lumière Brothers work was of every day life; One of the Lumière Brothers first films was a train pulling into a station it was a face on shot. The film looked so realistic people was screaming as they thought the train was going to hit them, it must have been so amazing for the Lumière Brothers knowing that they could make something that wasn’t real scare people. The Lumière Brothers seemed like quite down to earth people. The genre for the Lumière Brothers was short films and biography as they based their films a around what everyone did, this is why I feel they were down to earth. I feel in todays era their films would only attract adults as kids would find a train coming into a station extremely boring. However in the eighteen hundreds I feel all audiences would appreciate how good the Lumière Brothers films were.} 

Charles Emile Reynaud Praxinoscope

The picture above is a Praxinoscope which is an updated version of the Zoetrope. Charles - Emile Reynaud was very clever he understood she didn’t have the skills like Edward Muybridge; Who created trip wires to take pictures. He invented a way of displaying moving pictures it was a very practical idea. He stuck his animation pictures on the outside of the wheel he had mirror which would reflect the image to the human eye when he span the wheel it would create a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of movement/motion. Reynaud  was heavily influenced by the Zoetrope however it was slightly different as Reynaud used a mirror resulting in cleaner and better quality images. Charles Emile Reynaud love of animation and film led to him showing the first ever projected animation displayed in public. Without Reynaud we may not have had projectors or even televisions. When looking at Reynaud’s first designs they were hand drawn and quite basic so the target audience could have been children. I feel Reynaud’s idea was clever if there was an animation ‘bodge job’ this would be it however this could be done by anyone as resources would have been quite cheap. If Reynaud was to improve his idea he could done more technical drawings with colour.

William George Horner

William George Horner was born in 1978 and he lived until 22 September 1837. He was a British mathematician, a schoolmaster and headmaster. The modern invention of the 'Zoetrope', under the name Daedaleum in 1834, has been attributed to him. He called it the 'Daedalum', most likely a reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus, though it was popularly referred to as 'the wheel of the devil'. The Daedalum failed to become popular until the 1860s, when it was patented by both English and American makers, including Milton Bradley. The American developer William F. Lincoln named his toy the 'Zoetrope', meaning 'wheel of life'.

The Zoetrope - 

A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures. The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.

I think William George Horner was great he made animation make sense but not through the creative side he made it real through the science side. 

Present Examples - 

This is the 'Cyclotrope', created and animated by 

Tim Wheatley.

This is Disney's modern-day take on a Zoetrope.

George Pal

George was born in Hungry in the year 1908, he started his career by getting accepted for an apprenticeship in Berlin. Within sixty days he was in charge of their cartoon production. 

Soon after George decided that he wanted to produce cartoon productions himself, but unfortunately there was not a single cartoon camera in Czechoslovakia. Whilst looking at stop motion camera's Pal was struck with a sudden idea. George came up with the idea of using puppets in his work and by using puppets he could use any camera to create his production. 

George Pal created 'replacement animation' in which multiple puppets were used to represent each action desired. The character would have numerous of different head with lots of different expressions for each. This took a large amount of time to do but once the heads were made, they would be re-used and would make production time much faster.  

This technique is used even now in 'The nightmare before christmas'. George Pal also created armatures which allows the puppet to move. Using different heads for the puppets means that Pal could create more realistic facial gestures. 

Pal had a large target audience that appealed to both young and old viewers, he used puppets, but used them in a way that the animations would appeal to all age types. 

I think George Pal's work is excellent he created something to make an industry advance although he nothing like Edison. He made stop motion more modern making it easier for films like flushed away and chicken run to make such quality films. 

Joseph Plateau

Joseph Plateau was a belgian physicist and he He was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device 'The Phenakistoscope' he created this device in 1832. 

The device he created was an updated version of a device called 'The Stroboscope' Both devices gave the illusion of a moving image. 
The Phenakistoscope consisted of two disks, one with small equidistant radial windows, through which the viewer could look, and another containing a sequence of images. When the two disks rotated at the correct speed, the windows would match up with other windows to create the illusion of moving images, and the images created an animated effect. The projection of stroboscopic photographs, creating the illusion of motion, eventually led to the development of cinema.

The technique of the phenakistoscope has been brought a long way since it was created now there is more frames per second so that there is a smoother animation. The Phenakistoscope had about 13 frames in total, were as now most animations operate between 24 to 28 frames to have a smoother playback were as if you only had 13 frames per second in the modern animations today the playback would look jumpy and not real or natural like a running film.

I think plateau as excellent again people havent given plateau the recognition he deserves people like Edward Muybridge wouldn't have got the inspiration from anywhere else. Withut the Moving image Aardman Studios wouldn't have existed today, films like chicken run wouldn't be with us today.