CHENNAI: Do you remember the times when we laughed to the antics of Tom and Jerry? For decades, most of us have been entertained by the beloved cartoons on TV screens, which have, in the last 20 years, made a stunning coup onto the silver screen as well. From 15-minute animated shorts to two-hour full-length feature films, the animation industry has come a long way. City Express takes a look at the evolution of animation industry as it makes us gasp, smile and laugh at every turn.
One of the first recorded uses of animation as entertainment was through the thaumatrope, which was popular in the 19th Century. “The thaumatrope consisted of a disk with a picture on each side, and with two strings used to twirl it,” informs L Balakrishnan, faculty at Global Institute of Animation and Gaming.
“When the disk was twirled, the two pictures blended into one due to persistence of vision; it provided the illusion of motion.” Later, a circular device called a phenakistoscope was widely used to showcase a continuous movement of a character for a short duration. Flipbooks, in which each frame was drawn by hand on pieces of paper and then flipped, became widely popular.
All this changed with the advent of motion picture technology, which allowed recording of movement. “It was the pioneer, Walt Disney, who used traditional animation for the first time. He used stop-motion animation, in which each hand-drawn frame was recorded and displayed at a rate of 24 frames per second, in his first popular film featuring Mickey Mouse, Steamboat Willie (1928),” explains Balakrishnan.
This led to a great following for cartoon animated TV shows and movies. The golden age of animation came with Walt Disney embarking on a series of successful productions starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Fantasia, Pinnochio (1940) Dumbo (1941) and Cinderella (1950).
While Disney focussed on feature lengths, animation was brought to households in the form of the classic beloved Tom and Jerry episodes, created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbara, that ran originally from 1940 to 1958. Hanna-Barbara would go onto create many such successful series, especially pop-culture favourites such as The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, The Jetsons and The Smurfs through its syndicated Cartoon Network Channels.
“In India, the first film to use live-action animation was the Rajinikanth-starrer Raja Chinna Roja (1989), which in turn, was inspired from 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” elaborates Balakrishnan. The shift to a more-story oriented format came after Disney’s critical hit The Lion King (1994), after which Pixar Studios came forth with the beloved Toy Story (1995), which claimed fans for its original story and path-breaking animation. It gave birth to several of our more popular franchises, from the Ice Age series, Madagascar, Shrek and of course Kung Fu Panda!
In between, there were novel uses of animation techniques such as clay-animation, which involves creating clay models and expressions for every frame of the character.
This was most prominent in the children’s series Pingu and the popular Wallace and Gromit series. “3D animation took technology by leaps and bounds; what required a team of hundreds of people to do now requires merely 50,” adds Balakrishnan.
The 3D animated Shrek series broke through as a critical and commercial success, paving the way for the technology in the 20th Century. India’s first 3D animated movie was Roadside Romeo (2008).
It was only a matter of time, therefore, before the next level of animation was on the horizon: real-time. “Real-time animation refers to motion capture. This is truly a synchronisation of both acting and animation,” adds Uthay. “While earlier the actor only provided his sounds, now he provides his expressions too!”
Motion capture movies such as Beowulf (2007), Tintin (2011), and Avatar (2009) especially have given a boot to this new form of entertainment. Rajinikanth’s Kochadaiiyaan (2014) was the first Indian movie to use photorealistic motion capture technology.
British actor Andy Serkis has been getting plaudits for his motion capture portrayal of the ape Caesar in the reboot of Planet of the Apes, as well as for Supreme Leader Snoke in the new Star Wars sequels. From Steamboat to Star Wars — the magic of animation keeps us at the edge of our seats!