The Magic of Animation

A flip book works because each picture is a little different from the one before it. When you flip the pages quickly, your eyes see the pictures as one moving action. That's animation!

Long before movies and cartoons appeared on our screens, people were finding clever ways to make pictures move!

How Animation Began

About 36,000 BC!

(Photo courtesy J. Clottes, Chauvet Scientific Team)

Way, way, way, back when, cave dwellers first drew pictures with extra outlines, or in this case, a bison with eight legs, to try to show movement. This cave drawing is the earliest known form of animation, found in Chauvet Cave in France.

1830–Phenakistiscope Disc

(Public domain image)

People created other things like this disc, which looked like a cat chasing another cat, and a donkey moving, when it spins.

1833-1834–Zoetrope

Many other devices were created through the years, like this zoetrope and the praxinoscope (1876-1877)

1914–First Keyframe Animation

Gertie the Dinosaur was the world’s first keyframe animation, created by Winsor McCay. Every second involved many hand-made drawings. This was the blueprint for Disney’s animation, which then paved the way to the modern world of animation.

Click on the Gertie the Dinosaur video to see the first ever short animated movie!

Modern Animation

Today’s animation is digital, and we can create amazing animations that look real. But the frame concept is still true. Video is shown in frames (or still pictures) per second, and there are typically 30 still pictures flashing by for every second of video. Our brain sees it as motion!