Working on and off for two years on this groundbreaking stop-motion movie, England's J. Stuart Blackton produced what historians acknowledge is the first animated film ever produced. The three minute effort may not impress today's CGI generation, but considering the context when it was released, the film marked a new beginning in animation.
Blackton had already dabbled in stop-motion filming when he released his 1900 movie "The Enchanted Drawing." Adopting Georges Melies' process of stopping the film in camera and adding a line or an object on a board, Blackton knew what tricks could visually be performed in the projected screen. Extending his rudimentary practice further, he forged an entirely new genre in cinema by his Funny Faces.
Combining live action--mostly showing his arm and an erasure--with line drawings of chalk on a blackboard, Blackton created a magical world where two humans sketched on the board would interact with one another. In addition, he would use hazy effects to look as if smoke was emitting from one of the drawings as the drawn figure was puffing on a cigarette This effect was the end product that Blackton labored after years of working to duplicate on celluloid smoke coming from a nearby generator when he first discovered the ghostly vapor while filming another movie on his studio's roof.
Another filming technique devised in Funny Faces was a sequence of a cut-out animated clown, which precluded drawing and redrawing each moving chalk line. Here, Blackton simply moved the cutout outline frame-by-frame, speeding up the animated process. Walt Disney in his early days of drawing animation used the cut-out technique duplicated from Blackton's invention for his "cartoons."
Blackton could tinker long and hard with new animation since he was part owner of the vibrant Vitagraph Studios, which produced so many cutting-edge movies. Vitagraph was sold to Warner Brothers in 1925 for a nice profit.
Blackton had already dabbled in stop-motion filming when he released his 1900 movie "The Enchanted Drawing." Adopting Georges Melies' process of stopping the film in camera and adding a line or an object on a board, Blackton knew what tricks could visually be performed in the projected screen. Extending his rudimentary practice further, he forged an entirely new genre in cinema by his Funny Faces.
Combining live action--mostly showing his arm and an erasure--with line drawings of chalk on a blackboard, Blackton created a magical world where two humans sketched on the board would interact with one another. In addition, he would use hazy effects to look as if smoke was emitting from one of the drawings as the drawn figure was puffing on a cigarette This effect was the end product that Blackton labored after years of working to duplicate on celluloid smoke coming from a nearby generator when he first discovered the ghostly vapor while filming another movie on his studio's roof.
Another filming technique devised in Funny Faces was a sequence of a cut-out animated clown, which precluded drawing and redrawing each moving chalk line. Here, Blackton simply moved the cutout outline frame-by-frame, speeding up the animated process. Walt Disney in his early days of drawing animation used the cut-out technique duplicated from Blackton's invention for his "cartoons."
Blackton could tinker long and hard with new animation since he was part owner of the vibrant Vitagraph Studios, which produced so many cutting-edge movies. Vitagraph was sold to Warner Brothers in 1925 for a nice profit.