The Earliest form of Animation

The first examples of trying to capture motion into a drawing can already be found in paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are depicted with multiple legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to depict a sense of motion.Shadow Puppetry was also an animation ancestor, e.g. the Indonesian animated shadow puppet called Wayang around 900 a.d.

In the 17th to 19th centuries, simple animation devices were invented long before film projectors: the Thaumatrope, Phenakistoscope, Praxinoscope, Zoetrope, Stroboscope, Magic Lantern and Mutoscope. These were more complex versions of the flip book, often using drawings, paintings, photos, or slides on rotating card/s or cylinder. These “optical toys” tricked the eye into believing that the images were moving. The light source was often an oil lamp, light bulb, or none (natural light).

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “History of Animation“.