Animation Timeline

  • Flip Book

    The beginning, middle, and ending
    drawings of a flipbook are similar to what animators call “extremes” or
    “key frames” and the drawings that link them could
    be considered “in-betweens.”
  • Praxiniscope

    In 1892, Émile Reynaud opened his popular Théâtre Optique in
    Paris, where he projected films that had been drawn directly on
    transparent celluloid, a technique that would not be used again until
    the 1930s
  • First animation studio

    Raoul Barré and Bill Nolan
    opened the first animation
    studio in New York in 1914.
  • Rotoscope

    Brothers Max
    and Dave Fleischer, creators of
    Betty Boop, patented the
    rotoscope in 1917, enabling
    animators to copy the
    movement of live action by
    tracing filmed live-action
    images frame by frame.
  • The first cartoon

    The Disney studio produced Steamboat Willie
    (1928), the first cartoon to synchronize sound with movement, and the
    short three-color Technicolor film Flowers and Trees, which won the first
    Oscar for animation in 1932. I
  • Commercial animation using three-dimensional materials.

    . In the 1940s, George Pal’s Puppetoons
    represented one of the few examples of commercial animation using
    three-dimensional materials.
  • First feature-length computer-animated film

    In 1995, Disney released the Pixar production Toy Story, the first
    feature-length computer-animated film, which the Academy honored
    with a special award to its creator John Lasseter.