The pioneers of animation

George Melies

George mellies was a famous film maker in the late 1800's and the early 1900's. He was renown for being an illusionist and discovering the stop and start trick by accident. This happened when his camera broke whilst recording upon trying to fix it he discovered that he had made two scenes continue after each other. This was a very early way of editing or special effects it became very popular in film making and was used alot in film making in the early 1900's. one of his most famous pieces of work was his short film a trip to the moon. During this film he used many of his innovative techniques such as painting scenery and the stop and start technique. He was also known to color in his films by hand which can be seen in scenes from trip to the moon.

Windsor Mccay

Windsor Mccay was well known to be one of the pioneers in cartoon animation with popular work such as gertie the dinosaur (1914). He began as an artist drawing comics until eventually creating animated cartoons. he did this by drawing an image and then tracing it. when tracing the image he would make the after image slightly different than the previous. This created the illusion of persistent of vision making the cartoons appear to be animated. He was also a master of showmanship by doing things such as interacting with his cartoons like petting his characters on the head.

Lotte Reiniger

Lotte Reiniger was another innovative animator who worked beside her husband carl coch. She was a german animator however her work was known throughout the world for her work with. She would cut out different coloured pieces of paper into shapes such as humans silhouettes or animals. Then using the same persistence of vision principle which other animators were using made the silhouettes appear to move. Her work was also known for being very abstract and artistic for example in her animation 'the adventures of prince achmed'. She was animating whilst walt disney was still experimenting with there short animations. Most of her famous pieces of animation was created in the era of 1923-1926.