Very Early Animation! (PRE-FILM)

Before animation became anything near what it is today there was a lot of different ways that people figured out how to make things move. This was the very beginning and early stages of animation that is very simplistic and mainly involved only the upper class as the equipment was no accessible for everyone. The first example of animation being the Magic Lantern, which was an early predecessor to the projector, this made slides jump back and forth giving the illusion of a moving image. By creating a moving image, this was of course something very intriguing as people had only ever experienced a still image, as well as inspiring others to come up with new ways that they could make images move. The reason being for the strive of new ways to make images move, I feel was the desire for new technology as this was a time where inventions and creators were very popular. Animation then moved up where new pieces of equipment were developed and eventually animation became a form of entertainment for the masses. The development of animation could have been slightly encouraged by the idea of gaining profit from it, such as putting on shows and attracting an audience. Additionally, people saw it as a way of entertaining house guests with things such as Zoetrope, where animation really started to kick in and the upper class all had to own one for themselves. Flipbooks were also something that were popular in 1868 when they were created and this can still be seen as a modern day art form, which is pretty great! This also shows how animation has developed, something so little as a flipbook, which would have been very simple back then, has now developed to be crazy complicated books that are hundreds of pages thick and can tell a detailed narrative! The way animation has developed has been drastic and in this time period, even though so long ago, it was still developing rather quickly as new inventors came up with new equipment using only what they knew.