James Stuart Blackton
James Blackton is another practitioner who is considered to have made one of the very first iconic animations. His 'Humorous Phases of Funny Faces' involves drawing on a blackboard and then moving parts of the faces/bodies via stop motion animation. I wanted to include Blackton in my 'Understanding' posts because a lot of early practitioners use complex devices and mechanisms, but Blackton uses stop motion and this is a technique I am particularly interested in and I find it fascinating to observe where it derived from. Also in this particular video, he uses stop motion through drawing small parts of a face until it results into a whole face and a whole person and then starts to move it and I think as well as his brilliant aesthetic illustrations, if the frame rate was speeded up, could still be used in animated shorts today.
I also like how he has used chalk and blackboard. He could have easily used plain pencil and paper but he enforces the ability to manipulate and take away shapes and lines in order to create this short piece and since this was created in 1906, I think this was well ahead of its time.
Blackton created other pieces of work that are live action which shows that he had a keen interest in the film industry and had an eye for other areas in the field as well. But to me, after seeing one of the first stop motion animation pieces, I appreciate how this area of animation has developed and evolutionised since, but it is nice to see the very beginnings!
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