Steamboat Willie

For this week's post I looked at one of the earliest examples of a Disney animation that I could find - Steamboat Willie.  In this classic animated short film we see the beginnings of Mickey Mouse and other cartoon characters play out a few scenes on a steamboat going down a river.  What I enjoy about the animation is the use of sound to accompany the action on screen.  Disney is a talented artist but the story would be far less effective if it was missing a soundtrack.

This animation was completed one frame at a time, with the artist drawing each frame with slight differences from the previous one.  These drawings were then photographed and when played back at speed, they show the story of Steamboat Willie and his friends.  I can't imagine having to draw each frame over and over again, so I have a deep respect for Disney and all of the animation team.

Symphonie Diagonale

The film begins with: "Made in 1924 by Viking Eggeling, SYMPHONIE DIAGONALE is the best abstract film yet conceived. It is an experiment to discover the basic principles of the organization of time intervals in the film medium."

Symphonie Diagonale is widely considered to be a one of the best early short animation films, leaving an imprint of the history of film. Done in the the style of art deco, Swedish director and famous Dadaist, Viking Eggeling explored motion using scroll drawings.

Since animation at the time was not in the mainstream of art, Eggeling originally framed his idea for the film on long scrolls of paper. He would paint sequential images on the scrolls as if he were painting the film itself. This abstract way of making film was closely tied to music, in new form that Eggeling called "Visual Music."

Visual music was borrowed from numerous times, especially from Bauhaus design students who embraced it as a new temporal design method. Often using jazz, this new form changed the minds of many well known German animators.

Bead Game / Afterlife

Here's some early pioneering stop motion animation from Ishu Patel, who worked for the National Film Board of Canada for over twenty-five years producing and directing animated short films while also working as an educator. He developed many animation techniques, including one that allowed thousands of tiny beads to move under a continuously zooming camera (which can be seen in Bead Game). He is known for his experimental style and focus on deep philosophical issues.

Bead Game (1977) was nominated for an Academy Award in 1978. He used beads as a medium and transformed them continuously, offering his vision of evolution from the smallest forms of ancient life to modern man.

Afterlife received an Outstanding Achievement Award at the London Film Festival in 1979. He placed clay shapes on top of glass and lit the animation from below, producing what you see here. This particular animation is considered one of his greatest.

While these videos are both pretty old, it's still important to understand how far we've come and how these animations have inspired artists today.