Monday, January 3, 2022

Thomas Edison Invention Helped Animation Cartoon Development History

 


You probably remember him as the famous inventor who invented the Light bulb💡 Edison was an American inventor and businessman and developed many devices that influenced everyone in the world. The devices invented include the phonograph, the camera and the kinetoscope. The Kinetoscope is one of the first cinematographic devices, created in (1894). It was designed to allow one person at a time to watch movies through a peephole at the top of the device. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector; however, it was touted as the basic approach
that would eventually become the main product for all film screenings before the invention of video. It
created the illusion of movement by placing a perforated film strip with sequential images on a light source with a high-speed shutter.


The Lumiere Brothers in the 1890's, Louis Lumière and brother Augusté Lumiere wanted to develop a motion picture camera that would be much more advance than the invention invented by Thomas Edison called the kinetograph... it did not have a projector. The brothers wanted to develop a new break thru idea with sharper images and better lighting than the Kinetograph. The cinematograph they came up with weighed only 16 pounds, which meant it was easy to transport. Also, the cinematograph was operated manually with a single crank, while Edison's, was electric powered and heavy. While only one person could use Edison's kinetoscope to see through an eyepiece at a time, the Lumiere brother's peep show style cinematograph could project an image onto a screen so that a huge audience could view the images at same time. Interesting History Note : The device was first invented and patented as the "Cinématographe Léon Bouly" by French inventor Leon Bouly on February 12, 1892. Bouly coined the term "cinematograph," 
Due to a lack of funds, Bouly was unable to develop his ideas any further and maintain his patent fees, so he sold the rights to the device its name also to the 
Lumière brothers. In 1895, they applied the name to a device that was largely their own creation. 

But earlier before all this great development with cinematography 1n 1877 a man named Charles Reynaud a French inventor was responsible for the first projected animated cartoons. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and then, on 28 October 1892 he projected the first animated film in public in Paris. 

In my conclusion with this post, in my research it was a bit confusing who invented the cinematography first but there was a lot of competition amongst these great minds of inventors, and they all contributed to the great age of animation. / BJ🙈🙉🙊

PS... Don't forget to check out the video at the bottom of this post....."How animated cartoons are made". You had to have a lot of patience, Thumbs Up !



Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Cartoon History: Real Human Girl Inserted Into Silent Vintage Cartoon 1925 ... " No Way"



You thought Michael Jordan was a slam dunk
inserted into a cartoon with "Space Jam" 1996🏀. But in 1920 Walt Disney ingeniously came up with a cartoon short named "Alice Comedies". This young real girl was inserted into a cartoon animated world with Julius the cat... he looked like a version of Felix the cat to me. This was Walt Disney's first successes. The history of this cartoon series goes a little like this. Four actresses actually played Alice; Virginia Davis was the first, followed by Dawn O'Day, Margie Gay, Lois Hardwick. Alice wonders into a cartoon studio and looks at how cartoons are made, all of a sudden that night she begins to dream about the characters she saw in the studio. She sees herself inside the cartoon with all the animated characters and begins to play with them. This cartoon short and others.... I believe 26 of them, became the stage for what was to become Alice Comedies. Eventually the Alice series became some cartoon and non-cartoon characters with real people, but I'm not sure when it converted over. I'll leave a link here to help better explain the timeline of the short series' rather than my short version of this. And also, Alice eventually became "Alice In Wonderland" But I'm only here to talk about the animation cartoon version of this history./ BJ🙈🙉🙊

I have a couple of animated cartoon versions of "Alice" on the side bar.




Friday, December 24, 2021

Vintage Cartoon History: "Amos n' Andy" Animation

 

Remember the "Amos n' Andy" Show? but I bet you didn't know about the two cartoons that Van Beuren Studios made about the famous radio and tv series.  January 12, 1926, A two-man comedy radio show “Sam ‘n’ Henry” debuts on Chicago’s WGN radio station. Two years later, it changed its name to “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” the show became one of the most famous radio programs in American history.  While the show had a brief life on 1950s television with black actors, the 1928 to 1960 radio show was created, written and voiced by two White actors, "Freeman Gosden" and "Charles Correll", who played Amos Jones (Gosden) and Andrew Hogg Brown (Correll). Black actors "Alvin Childress" and "Spencer Williams" took over the roles of Gosden and Carrell, the show was the first TV series to feature an all-Black cast and the only one of its kind for the next 20 years. This did not stop African American advocacy groups and eventually the (NAACP) from denouncing both the radio and tv series version. These protests led to the tv show’s series cancellation in 1953.  But you say..."What about the animation cartoons"? Well, there is very little history surrounding the animated cartoons but here is what I could only round up. Van Beuren Studios produce two animated cartoons of the famous radio show in 1933 and 1934..."The Lion Tamer" and "The Rasslin Match". Both cartoon shorts were short lived, but in my in my opinion, it was because Van Beuren Studios closed shortly thereafter (1936) and the cartoons did not fare wellGeorge Stallings was the animator assigned to these cartoons. George Vernon Stallings (No Pic) September 9, 1891 – April 9, 1963, was an American animation director and writer. He started working for Bray Productions in 1916 where he directed the "Colonel Heeza Liar" series of shorts, and the "Krazy Kat" shorts. He invented "the animation disk placed in the center of the drawing board" in the 20s. Its primary use by 1930 was as an aid in inking cels. He then worked for Van Beuren Studios from 1931 through 1934.

 If you have any more history on these animated cartoon shorts or a picture of George Stallings, let me know.  I have one of the cartoons on this blog below.

                               Enjoy ! /BJ 🙈🙉🙊

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Dynamic Duo "Hugh Harman and Rudolph Ising" Animated Cartoon History


 In 1927, Harman and Ising were still operating for the Walter Disney Studios on a series of live-action animated short subjects called the Alice Comedies. The 2 animators created Bosko in 1928, a not so racist black cartoon which was pretty funny,to take advantage of the new "talkie" craze, that was sweeping the film industry. They began planning and creating a sound cartoon with Bosko in 1928, before their departure from Walt Disney. Hugh Harman created drawings of the new character and registered it with the copyright workplace in 1928. "Bosco" the character was registered as a "Negro male boy" underneath the name of Bosko. 

Hugh Harman and Rudolf Carl "Rudy" Ising, were both born the same month and year, August 1903. Harman died 1982 and Ising died in 1992. The dynamic duo were former film maker employees, getting their begin on series such as the "Newman Laugh O Grams", the "Alice Comedies" and "Assassin the Lucky Rabbit", helping to jump-start the Warner Bros. Cartoon Studio in 1929, which they helped get MGM' animation department off the ground also. They were conjointly the creators of Bosko, the "Talk-Ink kid", and Foxy, and also MGM' Happy Harmonies, the "Barney Bear" shorts, and much of one shot shorts, along side the associate degreeti-war short "Peace on Earth". They definitely had a significant role in shaping the events of The Golden Age of Animation. They moved around a bit from Disney to VanBuren Studio to Warner Bros. and their own studio then back to Disney, that jumping around just probably meant they were good at what they do ! At least that's what I think ! but I wasn't even born yet ! (my 2Cents worth). BJ