Silent Era Animation

The Development Of Animation During The Silent Era

Animation nowadays is a phenomenon, it depicts and portrays entertainment to people of all ages. Animation compromises of not one, but many styles, genre or methods in their presentation depending on the culture of the creators, country of origin, target audiences and other criteria. Such mainstream or popular animations now are such as animations that derive from american comics like Marvel and DC; as well as anime which are animations from Japan. But how was animation during the a time long before the present? In the midst of the silent era (approximately between years 1906 - 1930), numerous great animations were created to the extend that it made the rise of animation popularity. Animation

The process involves drawing the characters on cels, a transparent sheet, and placed over a static background drawing. This smoothly reduces the image redrawing process, enabling several separate team based production process and less cost-efficient film production.

In 1915, rotoscoping was invented by Max and Dave Fleischer. Rotoscoping is an animation technique which is used to trace drawing, frame by frame over footage, resulting a mixture or combination of both realistic films and animated cartoons. Out of the Inkwell was produced in the same year by Max Fleischer using the mentioned animation technique. The rotoscope method was later patented by Max Fleischer in 1917. After that, such animated classics were released by their studio such as Ko-Ko the Clown, Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor

The series debuted as a prototype of the series as a short film entitled “Feline Follies” in Paramount Pictures. It became astoundingly successful throughout the 1920s. This leaded to the rise of cartoon industry, bringing many studios and each of their own cartoon stars into the new cartoon trend.

In 1923, the earlier version of Alice 's Wonderland by Walt Disney was produced. This short was the first in a series of animated cartoons called Alice Comedies. The year after in 1924, experimental sound Song Cartoons were released by Max Fleischer. Nevertheless, not many people were interested in sound shorts at the time partly not many theaters have electronic speakers equipped.

At the start of 1928, Disney created Steamboat Willie, which was the first animated cartoon with sound. Most people who watch Disney films nowadays would be familiar with a clip of Mickey Mouse whistling while steering a boat in the present animation film introductions. The film includes sound effects, featured voices and fully post-producted sountrack. The sounds were printed on the film