Phenakistoscope is basically a spinning animation that can be made by construction paper or cardstock.
As you can see in the photo, there is a character riding a bike repetitively but with different movements to make an animation. So when you spin the cardboard, it will turn into illusion of images in motion.
In 1832, Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and his sons introduced the phenakistoscope (“spindle viewer”).
This is a tutorial of how to make your own phenakistoscope.
The early Zoetrope was originally made in China by a man named Ding Huan in 180 AD.
The modern Zoetrope was invented in 1834 by William Georger Horner whose a mathematician.
A Zoetrope is a open cylinder with slits on the side of the open cylinder. The frame by frame drawings are inside the cylinder, so when the Zoetrope spins it will be able create a mini animation.
In a Zoetrope there’s an animation reel, strobe effect, Zoetrope wall and a base.
A zoetrope is really similar to the praxinoscope, so similar that mainly people mixed them up. The only thing that is mainly different between them is that the zoetrope uses slits and the praxinoscope uses mirrors, so these are using different types of methods to create a spinning animation.
The praxinoscope was invented in 1877 by a Frenchman, Charles Reynaud who was the first to overcome the picture distortion caused by viewing through moving slots. This was a great invention that many people say it’s better than the previous ones before praxinoscope. And because of it, it quickly replaced the zoetrope’s popularity.
Praxinoscope has mirrors in the middle with frames at the side that’s been placed inside a shallow outer cylinder, to see the movement of the animation you have to spin it and look at the mirrors. The number of mirrors are actually equal to the number of pictures so the images of pictures are viewed in the mirrors.
The reflected pictures gives an illusion of moving pictures, when the outer cylinder rotates.
This is how the mirror is placed.
To spin the Praxinoscope, you have to spin the top of it.
A close up version.
Later invention of praxinoscope- praxinoscope theatre
The later invention of praxinoscope was invented in France by Charles-Emile Reynaud in 1877.
Instead of using viewing slits in a deep metal bin, the praxinoscope employed a ring of twelve flat mirrors—positioned halfway between the center of a much shallower container and its outer wall.
Recreative inventions
Praxinoscope
I love how people recreate zoetrope and praxinoscope in their own way to represent their own style.
This video below is a recreation of praxinoscope that is made of handmade crystal by Jasper Dowding.
I find this really interesting and creative, especially when the sculpture itself is actually a praxinoscope that works but crystal.
The video down below is another create praxinoscope that’s been created in a different style. Using both praxinoscopes and the technique of matching up the frame rate of the spinning record to that of the camera, no computer super-imposing was used; what you see is what rolled off the camera. The transitions between each section of animation was created by simply cutting or wiping between the bits of footage. All the animations were created, drawn and coloured by the director David Wilson.
Zoetrope
This zoetrope was created by Pixar, using the characters from Toy Story.
Andy tells an introduction of what a zoetrope is before it starts spinning.
Here is a video of an introduction of zoetrope in detail and the making of it.
This is anothere example of a zoetrope by Cartoon Network but this zoetrope is with the slits.
The Mutoscope was an early motion picture device.
In 1894, three American and one British, Herman Casler, Harry Marvin, Elias Koopman and William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson whom joined forces to develop a peepshow motion picture device called a Mutoscope. The British inventor who had invented the world’s first successful motion picture camera and viewer when he was employed by Thomas Edison, and who now was helping to produce a rival to his own invention, the Edison Kinetoscope.
Mutoscopes are similar to flip books but instead is in a mutoscope machine. Flip books are flipping different scenes of images in a book but mutoscopes is basically a machine that has each individual frames in the machine and to be able to make them animation, there’s a handle for you to rotate a wheel that has different frames, so it’s a lot easier to flip and its faster.
‘What the butler saw’, was one of the first photographic motion picture viewers.
This is a rough idea of how a mutoscope is when its handmade.
Flip Book
A flip book is a collection of combined pictures that can be flipped over to give the illusion of movement and the ability to create an animated sequence from a simple small book without a machine. It was very popular at the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20 the century.
Flip book was originally called Kineograph(moving picture) and its first appearance was on September in 1868. It was patented John Barnes Linnett under the name of Kineograph .
In 1894, Herman Casler invented a mechanized form of flip book called the Mutoscope.
In 1897, the English film-maker Henry William Short marketed his “Filoscope”, It was a flip book that was placed in a metal holder to facilitate flipping.
Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but the audience can also be towards adults.
They were first appeared with a small notebook that was originally stapled but nowadays you hold in one hand while you flip over the pages with the thumb of the other hand, either from front to back or from back to front.
Flip books are mainly popular with cartoons. Most times, animation for flip books was wholly original. Usually done by top animators at the studios – an extra, exclusive cartoon for those lucky enough to obtain them.
I like the ones that Walter Disney originally created his motion pictures by the use of flip book.
The earlier days of animation involved thousands of hand-drawn sketches unlike today’s computer generated pictures such as Tom and Jerry, Barney bear, Droopy, Woody the woodpecker, Andy Panda and more.
Silhouette animation is a cut out animation that tells a story by creating the characters made of either cut outs of black paper or silhouette cardboard with a while backdrop, or it can be a white silhouette with a black backdrop. This animation is mainly in black and white so it’s a lot easier to see. It was inspired by Chinese shadow play.
It’s similar to shadow puppets but shadow puppets use sticks to control the puppets, for silhouette animation they use the silhouette on a light ray box and take each frames using a rostum camera. Every time they take each frames they have to move the silhouette to create an animation.
For the silhouettes to move, they have to cut out different body parts and make small holes in irrelevant part, then they attach it. For example, A separate cut out of a head and a body have small holes and they are joint together with small wire hinges and its tied in the two separate holes so that the head and the body can move.
Silhouette animation is part of the traditional animation, this process was used for most movies from the 20th century. Before Walt Disney’s first animated movie ‘Snow White and the seven dwarfs’ in 1937, the silhouette animation was already invented.
Lotte Reiniger was a german animator who had always been fascinated on the Chinese shadow puppets. She invented the technique of cutting out cardboard to create an animation frame by frame. One of the popular films she made was ‘The Adventures of Prince Achemed’ which was based on the story of 1001 Arabian Nights.
My favourtie silhouette animation is ‘The Tale of the Three Brothers’ which was in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 1.
The Tale of the Three Brothers is a fairy tale told to wizard children. It was written by Beedle the Bard, it was published as part of a series of works that collectively are called The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
It was originally called the ‘The Peverell brothers’ Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus Peverell.
It’s my favourite animation mainly because of its story and the use of 3D silhouette makes it very interesting and unique.
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