Posts

The Silent Era

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Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McCay, 1914) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_c15oS5i5I   In 1914 Winsor McCay , using drawing and the stop-motion technique, created the first character-based cartoon called “Gertie the Dinosaur” This animation is about a dinosaur that has been 'trained' but gets into trouble because she does not know how strong she is. The animation gives a big impression to the audience to think that Gertie is 'alive'. I think what makes it more realistic is when 'he' throws a pumpkin to the dinosaur and he "appears" inside of the animation. I think its very fascinating how Winsor McCay expresses all movements and expressions through Gertie. In the animation you can see a few re-used drawings to avoid some repetitions.  animation techniques that was used: key frames  registration marks  tracing paper  animation loops 

Eadweard muybridge

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Eadweard Muybridge                          Edward Muybridge, an English photographer captured a horse in motion in 1879 which can be marked as one of the earliest attempts of motion pictures in the world.  inventor and innovator-Eadweard Muybridge was the first man in history to record a continuous live action by using still cameras which captured consecutive stages of movement. Muybridge was one of the early pioneers of photography, whose work documenting the movements of animals and humans continues to inform and influence today. He invented the zoopraxiscope - one of the first film projector in the world to animate sequences of images to display nymphs dancing. He won a substantial bet when his series of photographs depicting a galloping horse proving that at one stage of motion all four hooves are off ground. He is known as the 'father of the motion picture'. The famous  Horse in motion was a stud...

Zoetrope

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Zoetrope in this blog entry I will be showing my research of what a zoetrope is, who and when it was invented.   The zoetrope was invented in the 1830s by William George Horner. Apparently, the name 'zoetrope' was composed from the Greek root words- Zoe (life), tropes (turning) which would translate to 'wheel of life'. It consists of a cylinder with horizontal slit cuts. on the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with pictures from a set of a sequenced images which produces the illusion of motion As the cylinder spins, the person looks through the slit at the pictures across.