Zoetrope: A Very Brief History Of Animation

3.1 The history of Cartoon

When think about animation and cartoon, just come to mind many comical images. Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (2001) describes animation as giving life or spirit to something and the word cartoon as sketches or drawings similar to the ones we have seen in newspapers [3]. When these words are jointed to animated cartoon they mention to a “motion image containing sequence of pictures, each so little bit different that when filmed and run through a projector can see the images moving” (Random House, Inc., 2001, p. 82) [3]. Cartoons can be described as oldest form of animated cartoons, the traditional animation and the modern computerized animation technology [3]. Cartoon and animation have a great history

But it did not popular until the 1860‘s when it was patented by inventers lived in England and America. The American creator, named that device as Zoetrope which means wheel of life (see figure 2) (Highton, 2002; Zoetrope, n.d.; Beckerman, 2003). [3]

Figure 2. Replica of a Zoetrope (Dunn, 2004) [3]

The kinetoscope was a device created for movies to be watched as only one person through the window of a cabinet housing its components. First described by Thomas Edison in 1888 however was perfectly created by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson around 1890. The kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera also invented by the same persons (Kinetoscope, n.d.)[3].

Figure 3. An 1895 version of the kinetoscope (Kinetoscope, n.d.) [3]

The Praxinoscope (see figure 4) came after the Zoetrope and was designed in France by Charles-Émile Renaud (Crafton, 1993) [3]. Similar to the Zoetrope, it used strip of images positioned inside the surface of a spinning cylinder. It was a kind of projector different from the devices, which had emerged before, where could look only one person at a time at the films through a small hole. Alike to the nineteenth century lantern shows (Praxinoscope,n.d.)[3].The praxinoscope quickly got changed by the photographic film projector of the Lumière brothers, Louis Jean and Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (Praxinoscope, n.d.)

There are many cartoons shift in to computerized cartooning, but others still use hand drawn animations, but with a tactful use of CGI. It is great to be able to save time and concentrate on additional essential details of the work which could not be done in the past, but the world need to remember where it created from and must be in touch with reality. Not like present, before 50 years ago the situation of the Mickey Mouse was sad. Having a mixture of both is the best way for do. Walt Disney has been making hand drawn and also CGI films at that time. Perhaps the reason is that they understand what their clients want. Cartoon animation is not only for children, it is for the parents and grandparents too. Hopefully companies will not much use their hand drawing departments but some have done and simply focus on CGI. A combination of both is needed. There might be the debate about all being digital and accessible on the internet and as a result they must do it with computers to save money and try and earn some money. It will be great to see what men like John Lasseter can and will do for The Walt Disney Company and other producers in the years to