Family Guy is an American animation created by seth McFarlne who is also the voice of one of the characters Peter Griffin. It first started in 1999, even though it is an animation it is not for young children, it is aimed more at an older audience like teens and adults due to the type of humor.
south park
south park was created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, its an animated comedy which first started in 1997. They developed the show from two animated shorts it is also the third longest running animated series in america behind "The Simpsons" and "Arthur".
The Simpsons first appeared on a show with Tracy Ullman who is a british comedian, it was a short 30 second clip, however it had a good reaction. Matt Groening Created the Simpsons from this before that he was a comic artist, he did the comic "life from hell"
Captain Pugwash
Captain Pugwash was a children's TV series in the UK, it was originally a comic strip, and was created by John Ryan, it was first in colour in 1974. It was shown on BBC and it is also a good example of cut out animation.
Scooby doo the first ever eposode was in 1969 called what a night for a knight, Scooby Doo is about a bunch of kids and a great dain solving mysteries. The group consists of Velma Dinkly the highly intelligent one of the group, next you have Daphne Blake the damsel in distress, she is also the one who own the van they drive. For the boys you have Fred Jones the man with a plan always takes the lead and plans the traps, next theres Norville Rodgers mainly known as Shaggy a coward who loves food and is always used as bait for the monster. Finally you have Scooby Doo Shaggeys pet dog who is a great dain.
The magic roundabout
This was original a French TV programme in 1963. The BBC created a different version of the series using stop motion. The English Version appeared in 1965 it did well to then later on it they made a film and more.
Animation in 1930's to 1950's was progressing fast with amazing cartoons like Popeye, Bugs Bunny and Betty Boop, these are the animations I will be talking about in this blog post as they are some of the best animations of this time.
Popeye
One of the most popular animations in the 1930's is Popeye its first apperance was in 1929, its first silver screen was in 1933 in a Betty Boop cartoon called "Popeye the Sailor." "I Yam What I Yam" was the first cartoon in the series of Poeye cartoons they were produced be Fleischer Studios between 1933 and 1942. The character was created by Elzie Crisler Segar and Fleischer Studios adapted this character it was originally a comic strip.
Bugs Bunny
Bugs Bunny is one the most recognized cartoon characters and is still used today, since 1939 Bugs Bunny has appeared in 175 films and his first appearance was in a cartoon called "A Wild Hare" he is also the first cartoon character to appear on a postage stamp.
Betty Boop
Betty Boop made her first appearance in 1930 on a cartoon called "Dizzy Dishes", Betty Bopp is a Fleischer animation, she was created by Max Fleischer with help from Grim Natwick.
Animation first took of in the 1900's with its main founding farthers George Milies, Willis O'brian and Lotte Reiniger, I will be talking about these within this post because the were within this time period, (1900-1930).
George Milies
George Milies was a french illusionist in the late 1800's later on he became a film maker famous for doing things never seen on film before. He was great for special effects when he accidentally discovered the substitution stop trick in 1896, he was one of the first film makers to use this in his work. He was often in his own movies, later on in his life his studio was taken over for a hospital in the war almost all of his movies had been destroyed, in 1923 he was declared bankrupt until the late 1920's he made the first science fiction movie called "A Trip To The Moon" that is the video shown above it is recorded at 16 fps (Fames Per Second) . He is also one of the main founding fathers of early animation.
Willis O'brian
Willis O'brian was a special effects artist who also did stop motion animation from California. He worked on films such as "King Hong" in 1933 "The lost World" 1925 and "Mighty Joe Young" in 1949 for this he also won the first ever Oscar for special effects. These are considered as his greatest achievements.
Lotte Reiginer
Lotte Reiginer was a German animator who did silhouette cartoon animations based on shadow theatre, most of her work was short films and shadow plays for the BBC. She also made "The Adventures Of Prince Achmed" in 1926 which is one of the oldest surviving feature film.
Persistance of vision is a theory which says that the human eye always retains an image for a short period of time, this is why a strip of still images can make animation, because your brain remembers the previous image for a split second. This is the technique used in stop motion animation, because each image is different it gives the illusion that it is moving. This theory led to the beginning of animation. We use FPS (Frames Per Second), its normally 25fps which means that you use 25 still images for one second of animation, with this amount of images the difference between the previous, current and next image small. With this it means that the animation looks more realistic and more fluent/flows better together. Any gaps that you may miss your brain can fill them in thats how we get the elusion of animation.
Zoetrope
Zoetrope which was invented by William Horner in England 1834, he originally called it Daedalum. Zoetrope provides an illusion of motion when you place images inside the circular drum and spin it, you have to look through the slots if you look from above all you will see is a blur. If you look through the slots you only see the image for a short amount of time this is where persistance of vision works, you remember the images, and our brain puts the images together to create the effect of it actually moving.
Kinetoscope
This was invented by Thomas Edison, it allows people to see a motion picture and it was one of the first to do this. A kinetiscope works because it creates the illusion of movement by using a strip of film which has a sequence of images with a light over it, to watch it there would be a hole at the top that you would have to look through.
Mutoscope
It is a simple way of stop motion, this works by a series of images on a wheel when the rotation of the wheel brings them into sight to create a moving picture
phenakistiscope
The phenakistiscope is an early animation device that uses a spinning disk of full of images that spins to create illusion of motion.
thaumotrope
A thaumotrope was origanly a toy in the 1800's, it is a small disk with an image on each side and at the edges the are two pices of string, to make this work you have to spin the string quickly to make the two images work.
flipbook
A flip book is a book with a series of drawn images so that when the pages are turned quickly the images move, each image changes slightly to make this work.
Praxinoscope
The Praxinoscope was created in France in 1877 by Charles Emile Reynaud, this replaced the Zoetrope. Its has a strip of images in a cylinder and the picture is reflected by mirrors on another cylinder inside to make this work you have to spin the outside cylinder.
