READING 2 The History of Animation

The HISTORY of ANIMATION

Read the following article. Pay special attention to the words in bold. 3.3

You have probably seen some great computer-animated movies, like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, or Frozen. Computer animation has become the norm1 in today’s world. But animation has been around for over one hundred years. It has changed a lot over time. How was it done before computers were invented?

Early animations were created by hand. At the beginning of the 1900s, Winsor McCay, who is considered the father of animation, worked alone and animated his films by himself. He drew every picture separately and had them photographed, one at a time. Hundreds of photographs were needed to make a one-minute film. It took him more than a year and 10,000 drawings to create a five-minute animation called Gertie the Dinosaur. It was shown to audiences in theaters in 1914.

After celluloid (a transparent material) was developed, animation became easier. Instead of drawing each picture separately, the animator could make a drawing of the background, which remained motionless, while only the characters moved.

Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, took animation to a new level. He added sound and music to his movies and produced the first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Many people think he was a great animator, but he wasn’t. Instead, he worked mainly as a story editor. He was also a clever businessman who had other artists do most of the drawings.

Toy Story, which came out in 1995, was the first computer-animated film. Computer animation was also used for special effects in movies such as Star Wars and Avatar. If you’ve seen Life of Pi, you may be surprised to learn that the tiger was done by animation. To create the illusion2 of movement in these films, an image3 was put on the computer and then quickly replaced by a similar image with a small change. While this technique is similar to hand-drawn animation, the work can be done much faster on the computer. In fact, anyone with a home computer and special software can create a simple animation. continued

1 norm: a common expectation 2 illusion: a false idea of reality 3 image: a picture or drawing

One of the first animated films, Gertie the Dinosaur (1909)