There are few adults or children who do not like to watch cartoons. Now there are countless numbers of them: from cute and very funny to sad and philosophical, from drawn and "plasticine" to those made using computer or sand animation. But what was the very first cartoon in the world? And who created it?
First puppet film
The oldest cartoon featuring dolls was filmed in 1898 by James Stuart Blackton and Albert Smith. It is called the "Circus of the Lilliputians". The toys in it were made of wood.
Father of European animation
The first European cartoon, Phantasmagoria, was created in France in 1908 by the cartoonist Emile Kohl. In 1908 he joined the Gaumont film company as a photographer and screenwriter, but then moved on to creating animated films. Kohl made many films (over 250) using drawings, cutouts and dolls.
The very first cartoon in the history of Europe, it is also the first fully animated film in the history of animation. "Phantasmagoria" is a French word that means "an ever-changing complex sequence of what is seen or depicted." Kohl worked on this cartoon for about 5 months. He drew each frame on paper, which he then transferred to negative film. For this cartoon, which takes about a minute and 20 seconds, the artist had to make about 700 sketches, which he later photographed.
A characteristic feature of "Phantasmagoria" - its characters are drawn with white lines, and move on a black background.
Each drawing is only slightly different from the previous one. In the process of creating the cartoon, the author allowed himself some spontaneity with the images - that is why "Phantasmagoria" has a style a la "stream of consciousness".
The plot of "Phantasmagoria"
The film has no real story or structure. In the first scene, the hand draws a little clown Fantosh hanging from a horizontal bar.
- He falls and is replaced by a fat Fantosh in a hat, who takes off his hat, loses his wig and sits down in a seat in the cinema.
- In front of him sits a woman in a big hat, because of which Fantosh does not see what is happening on the screen.
- He takes off the feathers from his hat, and is frightened by the suddenly appearing spider.
- Now the screen is better visible, but under the lady's hat has a huge hairstyle, and Fantosh has to burn it.
- The lady's head explodes and Fantosh emerges from it.
- Then he falls into a box, on which weights are thrown from above, but Fantosh easily opens it, dropping the weights to the ground.
- With the help of a fishing rod, he catches a passerby who turns into some kind of liquid.
“Then a huge musketeer appears, and Fantosh burns his candles.
- Walking through the city, the clown loses his head, she jumps like a ball and is caught by a passer-by.
- It turns into a bottle, and Fantosh is inside this bottle.
- After that, the bottle turns into a flower, then into an elephant's trunk.
- Noticing the policeman, the elephant becomes the house that Fantosh runs into, and the policeman locks the door from the outside.
- Fantosh decides to jump out of the window and "crashes".Here the hands of the animator appear, "repair" the clown, he puffs up and, sitting on the horse, disappears.
First cartoon in the USA
In 1906, James Stuart Blackton, one of the founders of the Vitagraph Company of America, introduced the cartoon Funny Faces to the public. It was a series of unpretentious drawings with funny faces.
The first American cartoon character to appear in a cartoon short was Colonel Hayes Lear. He made his debut in 1913 in a cartoon by JR Bray called "Colonel Hayes Lear in Africa".
The first volumetric cartoon
The first animated film in the world in which the audience could see the volume was created by the Russian director and cameraman Vladislav Starevich in 1912. It was called "Beautiful Lucanida, or the War of the Barbel with the Stag".
The cartoon was filmed using time-lapse photography, and its main characters were real live insects from the Starevich entomological collection.
The plot of the cartoon narrated about the love of Lucanida, the mistress of stag beetles, and Count Geros, a representative of the tribe of longhorn beetles.
The tape was very popular with the audience. Knowing well the habits of insects and using the method of time-lapse shooting, Starevich achieved a natural plasticity of the "actors" in his picture.