Part II: The History of Animation
1906 J.Stuart Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is released. It is a three-minute short in which Blackton creates animating drawings of faces and people against a plain blackboard.
1908 The first short comprised solely of animated images Emile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie premieres in Paris.
1908 Humpty Dumpty Circus marks the first use of stop-motion animation on film.
1914 Earl Hurd invents the process of cell animation, which would revolutionize and dominate the industry for much of the 20th century.
1914 Gertie the Dinosaur is widely considered the first animated short to feature a distinguishable character. Cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay brings a walking, dancing dinosaur to life.
1917 The first feature-length animated film, Quirino Cristiani’s El Apostol is released.
1919 Felix the Cat makes his debut and becomes the first famous animated cartoon character.
1920 The first color cartoon, John Randolph Bray’s The Debut of Thomas Cat is released.
1922 Walt Disney animates his first animated short Little Red Riding Hood.
1928 Mickey Mouse makes his debut. Though the first Mickey Mouse cartoon is technically the six-minute short Plane Crazy, the first Mickey Mouse short to be distributed is Steamboat Willie which is also the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound.
1929 Disney’s iconic line of animated shorts, Silly Symphonies, kicks off its prolific run with The Skeleton Dance.
1930 Betty Boop debuts as a woman/dog hybrid in the short Dizzy Dishes.
1930 Warner Bros. Looney Tunes makes its debut with Sinkin’ in the Bathtub.
1931 Quirino Cristiani’s Peludopolis, which tells the story of a military coup against a corrupt president, boasts the first instance of sound within a feature-length animated film. There are no surviving copies of the movie in existence.
1932 The first full-color, three-strip Technicolor animated short, Flowers and Trees, is released. The film wins Disney the first-ever Academy Award for Animated Short Film.
1933 King Kong, which features several stop-motion animated characters, is released.
1933 Ub Iwerks invents the multiplane camera, which allows animators to create a three-dimensional effect within two-dimensional cartoons.
1935 The Russian film The New Gulliver becomes the first full-length feature to employ stop-motion animation for the bulk of its running time.
1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Walt Disney’s first full-length animated feature and the first such production to emerge out of the United States, is released. It becomes a huge box office success and Disney was awarded an Honorary Academy Award for the achievement.
1938 Bugs Bunny makes his debut in Porky’s Hare Hunt, though the character wasn’t named until 1941.
1940 Tom the cat launches his unending pursuit of Jerry the mouse in the Oscar-nominated short Puss Gets the Boot.
1940 Woody Woodpecker arrives on the scene with a small role in the Andy Panda cartoon Knock, Knock.
1941 The first full-length animated musical, Mr. Bug Goes to Town, is released.
1946 Disney’s first live-action film, Song of the South, is released and boasts several animated interludes. Because of its controversial depiction of the African-American character Uncle Remus, the film has never been released on home media in the United States.
1949 Prolific stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen makes his debut with the creation of the title character in Mighty Joe Young.
1972 Ralph Bakshi’s Fritz the Cat is released as the first X-rated animated feature in cinematic history.
1973 Computer-generated images are used for the very first time in a brief shot within Westworld.
1975 Revolutionary special-effects company Industrial Light & Magic is founded by George Lucas.
1982 Tron marks the first time that computer-generated images are used extensively in a film.
1986 Pixar’s first short, Luxo Jr., is released. It is the first computer-animated short to receive an Academy Award nomination.
1987 The Simpsons, an American adult animated sitcom created by Matt Groening airs. It is the longest-running American sitcom, the longest-running American animated program, and in 2009 it surpassed Gunsmoke as the longest-running American scripted primetime television series.
1991 Disney’s Beauty and the Beast becomes the first fully animated film to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
1993 Jurassic Park becomes the first live-action film to feature photorealistic computer-animated creatures.
1995 The first computer-animated film, Toy Story, is released to theaters. The achievement is honored with a Special Achievement Academy Award.
1999 Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace marks the first film to use computer-generated imagery extensively and pervasively, in terms of its sets, special effects, and supporting characters.
2001 The Academy creates a Best Animated Feature category. Shrek is the first movie to win the Oscar.
2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers features the first photorealistic motion-captured character for a film with Andy Serkis portraying Gollum.
2004 The Polar Express becomes the first fully-animated film to use motion capture technology to render all of its characters.
2005 Chicken Little becomes the first computer-animated film to be released in 3D.
2009 James Cameron’s groundbreaking Avatar is the first film to feature a fully computer-generated 3D photorealistic world.
2012 ParaNorman is the first 3D stop-motion animated film created with characters that are computer generated using 3D printing technology.
Part III: The History of VFX
1902 Georges Méliès experimented with new production techniques such as superimposition and fade-in and fade-out in The trip of the moon, the first true science fiction film to incorporate a wide range of stage effects.
1903 Edwin Stratton Porter directed The Great Train Robbery, which broke Georges Méliès drama production rules by using the split-screen method, iterative printing of interior and exterior shots, moving shots and large close-ups, it explores the initial American Western style.
1988 Ron Howard directed and produced Willow, which incorporated the first innovative use of computer-imaged variants in film.
1995 Toy Story directed by John Lasseter, was the first animated film in which the characters were entirely animated in CG.
1997 Star Wars used the world’s first motion-controlled camera. Lucas invented a technique for synchronizing stone plate images with post-production images. This technique dramatically improved the quality of the film and post-production efficiency.
1982 Star Trek used a computer technique called “source sequence”. It was the first time that a digital computer model scene was used in the film.
1985 The film Young Fulmos has used the first character generated by digital computer technology. A new film style trend has risen in the use of digital computer technology.
1989 The first three-dimensional computer-generated character was born in the film The Abyss.
1993 With Jurassic Park, movie production starts to join in the world of digitization and computer-generated imagery.