Pioneers of animation

George Melies

George Melies was a professional magician, owning his own theater in 1888 and putting on shows to full houses.  He discovered film in 1895 when he saw the Lumiere Brothers at an exhibition showing a short film. Melies was the first person to use the fade-in and fade-out and dissolve transition techniques.  He was also the one of the people who started stop motion, multiple exposure, time lapse and hand painted frames in film. George Melies has also been credited as the first person to have a naked person in film. Has made a total of 531 films. After creating one of his black and white films he sat and colored each frame to make it a colored film, each second has 25 frames so it would of took a lot of time and effort to complete, he is most famous for this film to this day.

               

                                    Winsor Mccay 

Winsor Mccay is one of the fastest animation drawers to this day. McCay's animated film Gertie the dinosaur is classified by film and animation historians as the first cartoon character created especially for film to display a unique, realistic personality. In the film, Gertie causes trouble and cries when she is scolded, and finally she gives McCay himself a ride on her back as he steps into the movie picture.

Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger was born on June 2, 1899. As a child, she was fascinated with the Chinese art of silhouette puppetry, even building her own puppet theater so that she could put on shows for her family and friends.After a bit of persuasion, she convinced her parents to enroll her in the acting group Wegener belonged to. In an attempt to attract the attention of her distant and very-busy hero, she started making silhouette portraits of the various actors around her. This had its desired effect, and soon she was making elaborate title cards for Wegener's films, many of which featured silhouettes. She made six short films during the following few years, all produced and photographed by her husband.

Stop motion animation research

Persistence of vision:

Persistence of vision is where our eyes retain images for a second longer than they actually appear making a series of quick flashes appear as one continuous image. 

Zoetrope:

A 19th century optical illusion toy consisting of a cylinder with a series of images on the inner surface that when viewed through the slits it gives the impression of continuous motion.

Phenakistoscope:

This is a device consisting of a spinning disk and a mirror. The disk is slotted and has images on the mirror side, looking through the slots at the mirror can give the effect of moving pictures.

Kinetscope:

One of the first motion picture cameras where you could view the images through a peephole. It gave an impression of movement as an endless loop of film moved continuously over a light source with a rapid shutter.

Mutoscope: 

It is an early motion picture device which does not project on a screen and it's viewing is only accessible to one person at a time.