The scientific paper, "The Persistence of Vision," written by Peter Roget in 1824 introduced the concept of how the brain sees individual images as a continuous series of motion. By 1889, Thomas Edison developed his first camera, the kinetoscope, that could project thirteen seconds of film. In less than a decade, photographer and later owner of Vitagraph Studios, J. Stuart Blackton made the first animated film using a backboard. Called "Humorous phases of funny faces," he drew a comic face then filmed it, stopped the camera while he erased the face and replaced it with another new face and then filmed it. This result of changing faces, or "stop-motion," was the first animated film technique.
French animator and caricaturist Emile Cohl used paper cutouts in 1910 to illustrate an early example of an animated film. His technique only required him to reposition the figure instead of redrawing it, which saved time. By 1914, Winsor McCay, the father of American animation, created his cartoon character of "Gertie the Dinosaur," which required thousands of individual drawings. Also in that same year, Earl Hurd, while employed at John Bay Studios, developed the technique of drawing on transparent cels and then photographed each one. Cel animation became the foundation of animated filmmaking for decades.
Walt Disney, a commercial artist, moved from Kansas City to Los Angeles in 1923 to work as a director. Disney demanded realism in his characters by training his animators to study anatomy to add more life to the figures. Disney advanced the cel animation process started by Hurd. Images were hand-painted on transparent cels in layers on top of each other. The background cel remained at the bottom of the pile, as each cel was filmed then removed. The process took weeks to produce a single sequence. In 1928, Disney produced the first talking animated film, "Steamboat Willie," an instant success that introduced Mickey Mouse. In 1937, Disney produced the first full-length color animated film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," earning an Academy Award, the first of 37 Oscars for Disney.
What had taken weeks to produce by hand was replaced by the first computer-animated production system, or CAPS, by 1980. By 1985, Disney Studios abandoned cel animation entirely for the computer-generated process, as did most major TV studios. The computer software offered a wider color palette and blended and shaded colors in a more realistic manner. The computer program, developed by Disney and Pixar artists and engineers, allowed camera movements like pans, tilts and zooms as part of the filming process. Disney bought Pixar Film Studios in 2006 and replaced CAPS with newer 2D and 3D animation processes.
Computer-generated imagery (CGI) changed filmmaking forever with the movies "Terminator 2" and "Jurassic Park" in the 1990s. Walt Disney Productions and Pixar Animation Studios jointly produced "Toy Story" in 1995, the first feature film completely animated by computers using CGI technology. The technique of "motion capture" is the process of recording any movement, human or animal, then transferring it digitally. The U.S. military uses it to simulate battlefield scenarios in its training. The first film to use the method was 2004's "The Polar Express." The 2009 film "Avatar" reinvented 3D technology as the first movie that used performance-capture imagery to produce realistic 3D characters and an entire world.