Cartoons are as old as the history of cinema. It dates back to as far in history as the late 1800s. However, animation historians often consider Émile Cohl‘s 1908 French animated film Fantasmagorie as the first animated cartoon. Interestingly, Fantasmagorie‘s runtime was only for 105 seconds. Over the years, from the earliest works of Walt Disney to today’s CGI animations, several cartoon characters have been created wearing glasses. Wearing glasses often gives most of the characters a nerdy look. Many of these characters were famous childhood cartoon figures or part of today’s animated films. Here are 10 famous cartoon characters...
- 1/25/2024
- by Onyinye Izundu
- TVovermind.com
There’s an alarming degree of disingenuousness, or perhaps merely naiveté, permeating “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché.” To begin with, there’s that title, “The Untold Story,” which ignores a number of earlier documentaries not to mention the significant amount of scholarship on pioneering filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché. Also omitted is any mention of the 2009 Gaumont and Kino DVD box sets that made 66 of her films available. These are what can be called inconvenient truths, for Pamela B. Green, director of “Be Natural,” is on a mission to discover why — supposedly — no one has ever heard of Alice Guy-Blaché.
As Green tells it, the reason is pure and simple: Because she was a woman, Guy-Blaché was written out of the history books. That’s not entirely wrong. Alice Guy, as she was then known, was present at the very start of the film industry and played a crucial...
As Green tells it, the reason is pure and simple: Because she was a woman, Guy-Blaché was written out of the history books. That’s not entirely wrong. Alice Guy, as she was then known, was present at the very start of the film industry and played a crucial...
- 5/31/2018
- by Jay Weissberg
- Variety Film + TV
'Amazing Tales from the Archives': Pioneering female documentarian Aloha Wanderwell Baker remembered at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival – along with the largely forgotten sound-on-cylinder technology and the Jean Desmet Collection. 'Amazing Tales from the Archives': San Francisco Silent Film Festival & the 'sound-on-cylinder' system Fans of the earliest sound films would have enjoyed the first presentation at the 2017 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, held June 1–4: “Amazing Tales from the Archives,” during which Library of Congress' Nitrate Film Vault Manager George Willeman used a wealth of enjoyable film clips to examine the Thomas Edison Kinetophone process. In the years 1913–1914, long before The Jazz Singer and Warner Bros.' sound-on-disc technology, the sound-on-cylinder system invaded the nascent film industry with a collection of “talkies.” The sound was scratchy and muffled, but “recognizable.” Notably, this system focused on dialogue, rather than music or sound effects. As with the making of other recordings at the time, the...
- 6/28/2017
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
With Godzilla and even Gamera getting all the giant monster love lately, we'd be remiss if we didn't wish a hearty Happy Birthday to one of the big screen's most incredible creatures, Gertie the Wonderful Trained Dinosaurus!
From Wikipedia: Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 animated short film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. It is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur.
McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act; the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCay's employer, William Randolph Hearst, later curtailed McCay's vaudeville activities so McCay added a live-action introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release. McCay abandoned a sequel, Gertie on Tour (c. 1921), after producing about a minute of footage.
Although Gertie is popularly thought to be the earliest animated film, McCay had earlier made Little Nemo (1911) and How a Mosquito Operates...
From Wikipedia: Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 animated short film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. It is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur.
McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act; the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCay's employer, William Randolph Hearst, later curtailed McCay's vaudeville activities so McCay added a live-action introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release. McCay abandoned a sequel, Gertie on Tour (c. 1921), after producing about a minute of footage.
Although Gertie is popularly thought to be the earliest animated film, McCay had earlier made Little Nemo (1911) and How a Mosquito Operates...
- 2/28/2014
- by Uncle Creepy
- DreadCentral.com
Today, February 8th, is the 100th birthday of the world’s oldest living dinosaur. Gertie, a charming and playful brontosaurus, was created by pioneering American animator Winsor McCay back in 1914. She dances, she does tricks and she has an enormous appetite. And, given that she’s a cartoon, she’s got a much better chance of survival than the rest of her species, buried forever under Alberta or somewhere similar. February 8th is actually the anniversary of the first time McCay and Gertie “performed” together. The original Gertie the Dinosaur cartoon was part of the animator and cartoonist’s vaudeville act. He would stand next to the screen and command Gertie to perform tricks for the audience, perfectly timed to his short film. Unsurprisingly, this was incredibly popular and McCay’s vaudeville performances began to occupy so much of his time that he began to slouch on his print work for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. When...
- 2/8/2014
- by Daniel Walber
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Very nicely restored edition of Émile Cohl's Mobilier fidèle (The Faithful Furnishings, 1910, sometimes known as The Automatic Moving Company).
Cohl was one of the very first movie cartoonists. His earliest shorts, notably Fantasmagorie (1908) used line drawings to capitalize on animation's ability to make one figure morph magically into another. The stick figure characters, white lines on black, are pretty crude. Eventually he discovered cut-out animation, which was less fluid but allowed for very detailed drawings (since you don't have to draw a dozen new images per second), showing what a fine illustrator he could be.
But it didn't take Cohl long to discover the idea of combining animation with live action (as Segundo de Chomón was also doing). Animation becomes just another special effect, as in many modern films. We do it with CGI, he did it by having props, whether it was snapping false teeth, or as here,...
Cohl was one of the very first movie cartoonists. His earliest shorts, notably Fantasmagorie (1908) used line drawings to capitalize on animation's ability to make one figure morph magically into another. The stick figure characters, white lines on black, are pretty crude. Eventually he discovered cut-out animation, which was less fluid but allowed for very detailed drawings (since you don't have to draw a dozen new images per second), showing what a fine illustrator he could be.
But it didn't take Cohl long to discover the idea of combining animation with live action (as Segundo de Chomón was also doing). Animation becomes just another special effect, as in many modern films. We do it with CGI, he did it by having props, whether it was snapping false teeth, or as here,...
- 4/25/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Today's launch of FEARnet original series Mari-Kari got us thinking about the best animated horror films. Here's a countdown of ten of our favorites. The first fully animated film was Fantasmagorie (1908), by French cartoonist / animator Émile Cohl. The title is a reference to traveling horror shows - "Phantasmagoria" presentations - that once criss-crossed Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. In these crude but popular horror shows, ghosts, skeletons, and other spooky imagery descended upon the audience by way of projection devices while swirling smoke and scary shadows added to the nightmare experience. Horror / fantasy was in the blood of animated movies, right from their...
- 6/3/2010
- FEARnet
“A Century Ago: The Films of 1908,” showcasing filmmaking highlights of 1908, will be the next presentation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Monday Nights with Oscar.” The screenings will be held on Monday, April 20, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City. Hosted by the Academy’s Director of Educational Programs and Special Projects Randy Haberkamp, the evening will feature live musical accompaniment by Michael Mortilla. Among the shorts included in the “A Century Ago: The Films of 1908” presentation are Biograph’s After Many Years, in which new director D. W. Griffith (above) experiments with parallel cutting and camera movement; Vitagraph’s trick film The Thieving Hand; Gaumont’s Fantasmagorie, animated by Émile Cohl; and one of the earliest Italian productions, Le Farfalle / Butterflies, presented from a hand-tinted print. Most films will be screened from 35mm prints drawn from the collections of [...]...
- 4/13/2009
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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