Implications of the Cel Animation Technique

Abstract

If technology were the only factor determining the creation of motion pictures, animated films would logically share a prominence equal to that of live-action films in the history of the cinema. Certainly the optical toys generally credited with having led up to the invention of the cinématographe, were more often dependent upon drawings than photographs. Emile Reynaud’s Praxinoscope projected a moving strip of images onto a screen for a paying audience in 1892, three years before the Lumière première; his strips were hand-drawn, did not repeat in cycles as the zoetrope bands did, and lasted for several minutes each. Photographed onto modern film stock, they can still be shown as animated cartoons. (After the invention of the cinématographe, however, Reynaud did not adapt his method by photographing the drawings onto a strip of film).