The development of animation films by Maria Azzurra Volpe

by Maria Azzurra Volpe

During the 20thcenturies the art of film underwent many big changes and developments, with the time many kinds of film flourished, one of them is animation. Nowadays animation is more popular than ever, it has its own TV channels, a section on Netflix and even one in porn!

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Animated films have been around for nearly a century now, and thanks to the constantly improving techniques they’re increasingly popular.

The history of cartoons lays its roots far in the past, when the moving image was first produced.

In December 1832, the Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau, invented the first ever recognised instrument able to create the illusion of movement, the “phenakistoscope”, inspired by Faraday’s wheel. The device was made of two disks, a small one from which to look, and another one enclosing a sequence of images laid in concentric circles. Looking in a mirror through the first disk's slots, let the viewer believe the images on the second slot moved.

That was the first step humanity took towards animation, and since then we’ve only been moving forward.

The first cartoon ever was created by a French cartoonist Emile Cohl, released in Paris in 1908 by the Gaumont company.

It was called “Fantasmagorie” and it comprised stick figures moving around facing morphing objects.

Disney is believed to be the first company to have created a cartoon with synchronised sound (1928, Steamboat Willie)

The business of animation movies has since been growing and many big American and Japanese companies have created different news styles of cartoons, one of the most popular is the “anime”. Animation is now so popular that it has its own tv channel “Cartoon Network”.

According to a statistic carried out by statista.com the number of Cartoon Network’s viewers in the UK, has been growing since the beginning of the 21stcentury, reaching its peak in 2014 with over 26,000 viewers.

Cartoons may be fun to watch by they are really hard to create according to Aliyah Coreana, multidisciplinary artist specialising in illustration, animation, graphic design and editing.

“The length of time it takes to draw a character depends on how complex the it is going to be” she said: “you need to consider aspects like costumes, small details and features, age, personality traits. Usually I have an image in mind of what I already want to create for my character, and these take the least amount of time. If I am trying to design a character from a popular story (like Alice in Wonderland) or a popular historic figure (Pocahontas) these take a little longer to create, you want to capture their essence but to also put your own artistic twist on it too.”

There are many different styles of animated characters, from the anime to the Disney or moreover the American ones like “The Simpsons” or “Family guy”.

Aliyah’s works are a mix of them all:“my style is like a fusion of anime and Disney; the east meets the west! I all draw characters that are from multicultural backgrounds because I believe representation is important and is not seen enough in the art and illustration world.”

According to Aliyah animation is more diffused now than used to be: “Animation is definitely more notorious than it used to be, but usually is mistaken to be just for children audiences which it is not. It can also be for adults like South Park and Rick and Morty”

Animation comes in different forms and dimensions, while in the past it mostly used to be 2D, most productions are now 3D.

 “Nowadays most films are produced in 3D” says Aliyah, “they are quicker to make than 2D films, but people are often nostalgic about the classic 2D films from Disney’s ‘Lion King’ to DreamWorks’ ‘The Road to El Dorado’ because, even though they take longer to create, being hand drawn and animated they had a certain charm that I feel is lost in most 3D films nowadays.”

Animation is also at the base of video games. Any kind of video games features animated characters, sometimes customisable.

Tirath Singh, a video games company owner says: “usually for our games the user creates their own character, we give a set of options for them to customise attributes and cosmetics”

The biggest game he has worked on is a football PC game “Super Club Soccer” where the user can create their own player and customise his items and sponsorship kit.

Many times, video games are also cartoon characters, it’s the case of Pokémon, one of the most famous anime watched by the 90s generation, which is going to make a huge comeback as a videogame by the end of 2019.