There are few adults or children who do not like watching cartoons. Now their uncountable number: from the darlings and very ridiculous to the sad and philosophical, from the drawn and "plasticine" to those made with the help of computer or sand animation. But what was the very first cartoon in the world? And who created it?
- The first puppet film
- The father of European animation
- The plot of "Phantasmagoria"
- The first cartoon in the United States
- The first bulky cartoon
The first puppet film
The oldest cartoon with dolls was filmed in 1898 by James Stewart Blackton and Albert Smith. It is called the Circus of the Lilliputians. The toys in it were wooden.
The father of European animation
The first European cartoon called "Fantasmagoria" was created in France in 1908, by caricaturist artist Emile Kohl. In 1908 he joined the Gaumont film company as a photographer and screenwriter, but then went on to create animated films. Kohl made many films( more than 250), using drawings, clippings and dolls.
The very first cartoon in the history of Europe, is also the first fully animated film in the history of animation."Phantasmagoria" is a French word, which means "a constantly changing complex sequence of what is seen or depicted".Kohl worked on this cartoon for about 5 months. He drew each frame on paper, which he then translated into a negative film. For this cartoon film, which takes about a minute and 20 seconds, the artist had to draw about 700 sketches, which later photographed.
Characteristic feature of "Phantasmagoria" - its characters are drawn with white lines, and move on a black background.
Each drawing is only slightly different from the previous one. In the process of creating a cartoon, the author allowed himself some spontaneity with the images - that is why "Fantasmagoria" has the style a-la "stream of consciousness".
Plot of "Phantasmagoria"
The film has no real history or structure. In the first scene, the hand draws a small clown Fantossh, hanging on the bar.
- He falls and a fat Fantôs appears in his hat, who takes off his hat, loses his wig and sits down in the cinema.
- Before him sits a woman in a big hat, because of which Fantos does not see what is happening on the screen.
- He takes the feathers off his hat, and the spider suddenly appears frightened.
- Now the screen is seen better, but under the hat the lady has a huge hairstyle, and Fantoshu has to burn it.
- The head of the lady explodes, and from her appears Fantosh.
- Then he gets into the box, on which we throw the dumbbells, but Fantosh opens it with ease, dropping the weights to the ground.
- With the help of a fishing rod he catches a passerby who turns into some kind of liquid.
- Then there is a huge musketeer, and Fantosh burns his candles.
- Walking around the city, the clown loses her head, she jumps, like a ball and catches a passer-by.
- It turns into a bottle, and Fantôs is inside this bottle.
- After this, the bottle turns into a flower, then into an elephant trunk.
- Having noticed the policeman, the elephant becomes the house into which Fantosh comes running, and the policeman locks the door from the outside.
- Fantosh decides to jump out of the window and "breaks".Here the hands of the animator appear, the clown "mend", he inflates and, sitting on a horse, disappears.
The first cartoon in the US
In 1906, James Stewart Blackton, one of the founders of the studio Vitagraph Company of America, presented the cartoon "Funny Faces" to the public. It was a series of simple drawings, on which funny faces were depicted.
The first American cartoon character to appear in the short film was Colonel Hase Liar. He made his debut in 1913 in a cartoon from the studio JR Bray under the title "Colonel Hase Liahar in Africa" .
The first bulky cartoon
The first animated film in the world in which viewers could see the volume was created by the Russian director and cameraman Vladislav Starevich in 1912.It was called "Beautiful Lucanida, or War of Barbel with Rohawk."
The cartoon was shot by the time-lapse shooting method, and its main characters were real living insects from the Starevich entomological collection.
The plot of the cartoon narrated about the love of Lucanida, the lady of stag beetles, and the count of Geros, a representative of the tribe of beetles-beetles.
The tape was very popular among spectators. Knowing the habits of insects and using the method of time-lapse photography, Starevich achieved natural plasticity of "actors" in his painting.
