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Sunday 28 August 2011

Animated cartoon

The phenakistiscope was a series of pictures showing sequential phases of the animation are seen through small slots spaced evenly around the rim of a disc. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the images reflected in a mirror, seeing a rapid succession of images that appear to be a single moving picture. It is regarded as one of the first forms of moving media entertainment that paved the way for the future film industry.

A phenakistiscope 

Birmingham printer John Barnes Linnett patented flip books, showing animation by flipping through the pages of a book in 1868.

The Théâtre Optique (Optical Theatre) was an animated moving picture system invented by Charles-Émile Reynaud and patented in 1888.

The first public performance of Reynaud's Théâtre Optique took place in Paris on October 28, 1892. The show included three cartoons, the first of which was a 15-minute animation, Pauvre Pierrot, made from 500 hand-painted images, which was the first ever presentation of projected moving images to an audience.

The first public performance in 1892. The image was back projected onto the screen

Reynaud’s animated film was a development of his praxinoscope which used a strip of pictures spinning around the inside of a cylinder.

In 1895 The Lumière brothers patented their combination movie camera and projector, the Cinématographe, which quickly outshone Reynaud's invention, driving him to bankruptcy. However, his public performance of animation entered history as shortly predating the camera-made movies.

Emile Cohl, comedy film writer/director at the Gaumont Studio, used simple stick figures to produce the first frame-by-frame animated cartoon film, Fantasmagorie in 1908 (see below).



In November 1912 Cohl began adapting the George McManus strip, The Newlyweds and Their Baby, into the first animated series. The films began appearing in movie theaters in March 1913 and Cohl achieved thirteen Newlyweds cartoons in thirteen months by using the bare minimum of actual animation; the scenes consisting of static tableau with dialog balloons appearing above each character's head. The series was an instant hit. 

The adverts for the Newlyweds films are the oldest on record to use the phrase "animated cartoons."

Walt Disney's first cartoon character was called Oswald the Rabbit.

Walt Disney's Galloping Gaucho and Steamboat Willie (1928) were the first cartoons with sound.

Walt Disney’s cartoon dog Pluto was created in 1930, just after what was then classified as the ninth planet, Pluto was discovered. The dog was first named Rover and he became Pluto in the 1931 cartoon The Moose Hunt.

The voice actors of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse from the 1930s got married in real life.

Mel Blanc was the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and many other popular cartoon characters. His real name was Melvin Blank but he changed the surname after a teacher told him he would amount to nothing with a name like Blank.

Mel Blanc voiced the part of Daffy Duck for 52 years (1937-1989), a record at the time for a single voice voiced for an animated character.

Fiddlesticks was the first animated sound cartoon that was photographed in two-strip Technicolor. It was made by Ub Iwerks and released on August 16, 1930. It was also Iwerks's first cartoon since he departed from Walt Disney's studio. 

Fiddlesticks is a short film about a frog who gets into all sorts of trouble. The film is notable for its use of two-strip Technicolor, which gives the film a vibrant and colorful look. The film's sound was also groundbreaking, as it was one of the first animated films to use synchronized sound.


Walt Disney's Flowers and Trees premiered on July 30, 1932. It was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-color three-strip Technicolor process after several years of two-color Technicolor films. Flowers and Trees was also the first Academy Award winning cartoon short.

Poster of first Technicolor Silly Symphony, Flowers and Trees

Looney Tunes was created to promote Warner Brothers' music catalog in the 1930's. That's why it's "Tunes" and not "Toons."

Popeye became the first cartoon character to have a statue in his honor when a Popeye statue was put up in Crystal City, Texas, in 1937.

Bugs Bunny made his debut in the Warner Bros animated cartoon A Wild Hare on July 27, 1940.  The cartoon was directed by Tex Avery and featured Bugs as a wisecracking rabbit who outsmarts Elmer Fudd, a hunter. A Wild Hare was a huge success and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Cartoon Short Subject.

Bugs Bunny's catchphrase, "What's up, Doc?", also made its debut in A Wild Hare. The phrase was originally spoken by Porky Pig in the 1937 short film Porky's Duck Hunt, but it was Bugs Bunny who popularized it.

Bugs Bunny's first appearance in A Wild Hare (1940).

Bugs Bunny was the first cartoon character to appear on a postage stamp.

The Bugs Bunny cartoon What’s Opera, Doc? was voted the Greatest Cartoon of all time in a poll in 1994. It is a parody of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle.

The first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, was released by Disney Studios and premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles on December 21, 1937. It was animated entirely by hand and took Walt Disney and his studio three years to complete. Snow White was exponentially more expensive than the animated shorts the studio had produced until that time and met with considerable opposition. Disney eventually had to mortgage his house to help finance the project, which was derisively nicknamed "Disney's Folly" by those in the film industry.

Walt Disney paid the animators on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs $5 for any gag that made it into the final version of the movie.

The cartoon cat and mouse Tom and Jerry made their debut on February 10, 1940, in an animated short released by MGM entitled Puss Gets The Boot. On this first release to the theaters the cat and mouse were called Jasper and Jinx.

The names of "Tom" and "Jerry" were suggested by animator John Carr who won $50 in a competition among studio members to come up with names. At the time Tom and Jerry was best known as the name of a Christmastime mixed drink. It was also a British slang term from the 1800’s, meaning “to fight and cause trouble”.


The names of Popeye’s four nephews are Pipeye, Peepeye, Pupeye and Poopeye. Their first appearance as Popeye’s nephews was in 1942.

Paul Winchell, who was the voice of Tigger in the Disney films, was the first person to design and patent an artificial heart.

The moment when Cinderella's Fairy Godmother transforms her torn dress into a gown was said to be Walt Disney's favorite piece of animation.

101 Dalmatians and Peter Pan are the only two Disney animated movies in which both parents are present and don't die in the movie plot.

Yogi Bear was the first breakout character created by Hanna-Barbera. In January 1961, he was given his own show, The Yogi Bear Show.

Yogi Bear was one of several Hanna-Barbera characters to have a collar. This allowed animators to keep his body static, redrawing only his head in each frame when he spoke—a method that reduced the number of drawings needed for a seven-minute cartoon from around 14,000 to around 2,000.

The Flintstones cartoon was the first thirty-minute cartoon to be aired during prime time.

Tom and Jerry and Popeye cartoons were secretly made in the 1960s in communist Czechoslovakia. Czech names were Americanized on the credits to avoid backlash.

Scooby Doo was designed by Iwao Takamoto, who first learned illustration from fellow prisoners in the Manzanar concentration camp for Japanese-Americans.

Casey Kasem was the voice of Shaggy on Scooby-Doo.

Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy was a failed cartoonist (he enrolled in a figure-drawing course at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The 1983 Inspector Gadget TV series was the first animated television series to be presented in stereo sound.

The Simpsons premiered on April 19, 1987 as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show. Below is the Simpson family as they originally appeared in The Tracey Ullman Show on their television debut in 1987.



The 1991 film Beauty and the Beast was the first animated movie to ever receive a best picture Oscar nomination.

The first series produced by Cartoon Network was Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 1994 and is considered instrumental in establishing Cartoon Network's appeal to older audiences.

ReBoot, a Canadian CGI-animated action-adventure television series that originally aired from 1994 to 2001, was the world's first ever half-hour, completely computer-animated TV series

In 1997 The Simpsons became the longest-running prime-time animated TV series, besting the six-season record previously held by The Flintstones.

Family Guy was the first animated series to be nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Comedy Series since The Flintstones in 1961

The best animated feature Oscar (longer than 40 minutes) was first awarded at the 74th Academy Awards in 2001 and was won by Shrek.

The last hand-drawn animated movie was the 2011 film Winnie the Pooh. In March 2013, CEO Bob Iger said there were no 2-D features left in development at the company; about a month later, its hand-drawn division was eviscerated and many veterans let go.

Beauty and the Beast, UP, and Toy Story 3 are the only animated movies to be nominated for Best Picture by the Academy Awards.

The Lion King is the highest-grossing hand drawn film in history.

Source Daily Express

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