Stop Motion Pioneers

Joseph Plateau - Stop Motion Pioneer

Joseph Plateau was a belgian physicist and he He was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device 'The Phenakistoscope' he created this device in 1832.


The device he created was an updated version of a device called 'The Stroboscope' Both devices gave the illusion of a moving image.
The Phenakistoscope consisted of two disks, one with small equidistant radial windows, through which the viewer could look, and another containing a sequence of images. When the two disks rotated at the correct speed, the windows would match up with other windows to create the illusion of moving images, and the images created an animated effect. The projection of stroboscopic photographs, creating the illusion of motion, eventually led to the development of cinema.

The technique of the phenakistoscope has been brought a long way since it was created now there is more frames per second so that there is a smoother animation. The Phenakistoscope had about 13 frames in total, were as now most animations operate between 24 to 28 frames to have a smoother playback were as if you only had 13 frames per second in the modern animations today the playback would look jumpy and not real or natural like a running film.

I think this technique was amazing for the time it was created in, as it is a number of images moving little by little and by placing the images into an object that moves you create the illusion of a moving picture and this is great as this the early start of modern cinema. It stands out as it was create from just 13 simple images and this is effective as when played back at speed it looks like the images are moving.

William Horner - 

William George Horner was born in 1786 and he lived until 22 September 1837. He was a British mathematician, a schoolmaster and headmaster. The modern invention of the 'Zoetrope', under the name Daedaleum in 1834, has been attributed to him. He called it the 'Daedalum', most likely a reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus, though it was popularly referred to as 'the wheel of the devil'. The Daedalum failed to become popular until the 1860s, when it was patented by both English and American makers, including Milton Bradley. The American developer William F. Lincoln named his toy the 'Zoetrope', meaning 'wheel of life'.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_George_Horner)

Charles-Émile Reynaud -

Charles-Émile Reynaud was born in 1844 and lived until 9 January 1918. He was a French science teacher, responsible for the first projected animated cartoon films. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877,  it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. 

The Praxinoscope it an updated version of zoetrope, this device was invented by Charles Reynaud. 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-%C3%89mile_Reynaud)

Eadweard James Muybridge - 

Eadweard James Muybridge was born in 1830 and he lived until 8 may 1904. He was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection. He adopted the name Eadweard Muybridge, believing it to be the original Anglo-Saxon form of his name. He immigrated to the United States as a young man but remained obscure until 1868, when his large photographs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him world famous. Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-action photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography. 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge

George Pal - 

George Pal was born in 1908 and he lived until May 2 1980. He was a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, principally associated with the science fiction genre. He became an American citizen after emigrating from Europe. With an degree in Architecture and highly developed drawing skills. There were no opportunities for an Architect when he left the University, so, putting his other talents to work, he found employment at Hunnia Films in Budapest.Pal worked at UFA Studios in Berlin where he became head of the cartoon department. Then, he set up his own film studio elsewhere in Berlin. His credentials attracted orders from companies for animated advertising. Instead of the cartoon approach, he developed his own take on making inanimate objects move, even dance, using the still evolving art of stop-motion photography. Advertisements featuring, for instance, Overstolz cigarettes, outfitted with faces, arms, and legs, were shown on theater screens strutting and singing as if drawn by a cartoonist.

Zoetrope

A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a number of pictures moving at a rather speed, with the images moving at a fast pace it gives the images the the motion of movement and tricks our eyes into thinking that it is a moving image. This device has had a major contribution to the animation world as without these small devices that these Pioneers made above animation, it think would be still left behind. This device a very early version of how we came out to make stop motion animation. The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion. 

For more information on the zoetrope and to look at where i got some of my information from please look at this site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope

The Lumiere Brothers

Auguste and Louis Lumiere were born in Lyon France. In 1894 they developed a camera and called it the cinemattographe. The Lumiere brothers films they produced would normally be around 50 seconds long, they would only be taken in one shot with the camera staying on a tripod fixed in the same position all the time. They were the producers of the first movie seen by an audience with moving image alongs side the picture being projected onto a screen. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager. It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera, most notably film perforations as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. 

The Praxinoscope -

The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered. 

The zoopraxiscope

The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. It was created in 1879, it may be considered the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The stop-motion images were initially painted onto the glass, as silhouettes. A second series of discs, made in 1892–94, used outline drawings printed onto the discs photographically, then colored by hand. Some of the animated images are very complex, featuring multiple combinations of sequences of animal and human movement.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoopraxiscope)