Cartoons And Animation Films Over 100 Years

Toy Story, Shrek and Finding Nemo. What wonderful animations the film industry has brought us over the last two decades and some serials are still going strong, but it wasn't always this feature filled, fun packed or engaging with story lines. Globally audiences are used to such cinematic performances by cartoon characters that are either transformed from the television and Mickey Mouse or invented especially for the big screen, like Shrek. These 90 minute fantasy worlds with funny voices and effects are a world a way from how animation filming began over a century ago.

The Boer War, no less, back in 1899 was a British war which required the support of citizens back home. What was probably the first war effort film also, the animation lasted thirty seconds and showed a puppets scribing words on a blackboard. The main aim was to request the audience send payment to Bryant And May, the match makers, so they could send matches to the servicemen on the front line of the Boer War.

Developed by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper this is known to be the first ever stop-motion animation to air in 1899 in London. In 1906 the final piece of the animation puzzle was brought to the cinematic screens. Humorous Phases of Funny Faces was a short animation developed by Albert Edward Smith and James Stuart Blackton at Vitagraph which featured moving drawings and formed under the process of single frame animation.

This was to be the founding father of cartoon in film which would lead to the greatest productions being aired 100 years later in the form of Toy Story and The Incredibles by using very similar methods. When the projection box was first envisaged, it was a frenzied audience which paved the way to its advancement in technology. Without the interest first apparent, films today may well never have caught on and we'd all still be watching theatre and live performances and actors and actresses would be stars only locally.

For cartoons to make such an early entrance to the film industry shows how art is still intertwined no matter the genre. That even though the cartoon was aimed at adults in the first instance, comic books that were present in the 1800s have only just to make it on to the big screen in the last half of the last century shows how much cinema has yet to offer.