According to I Love India, the attempt at making animation began thousands of years ago in Paleolithic times. Early humans tried to capture motion in their paintings, most notably in the way that they drew animals. Another important discovery happened in about 130 A.D. Ptolemy, the Greek astronomer discovered the concept of persistence of vision. A Chinese inventor, about whom little is known, made the zoetrope, an early animation apparatus. Animation received its next great technological boost in the 1800s with the invention of the Phenakistoscope, praxinoscope and the flip book. With the creation of motion pictures by the end of the century, animation moved forward again because of these technologies. No single person is credited with the development of film animation because many people were involved.
The inventions that promoted animation paved the way for J. Stuart Blackton to create the first animated film called "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces." To do this, Blackton drew funny faces on a chalk board and filmed each one. Emile Cohl's film "Fantasmogorie" was the first hand-drawn animation, done in 1908, and Cohl is also attributed with creating the first paper-cut animation in 1910. By 1913, celluloid had been invented, which made the process of animation easier. Winsor McCay's film "Sinking of the Lusitania" has been called the first animated feature film. It was completed in 1918.
The king of animation, Walt Disney is in a class by himself in animation history. Disney is credited with being the first animator to bring sound to animation in his cartoon "Steamboat Willie" in 1928. By the end of the next decade, he produced "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," the first full-length animated film.
Although computer-generated animation seems to be the norm in 21st century animation circles, the history of this animation medium goes back almost 60 years. MIT student, Ivan Sutherland created a program called Sketchpad. In 1955, the claymation character Gumby made his debut.
Computer-generated animation moved ahead and many breakthroughs in the field came in the 90s. Star Wars used computer-generated imagery or CGI, a form of animation, to tell its story. In 1995, Disney, along with the Pixar animation studio, created "Toy Story." It was the first animated feature film that relied completely on computer-generated animation to produce it. The film won an Academy Award for digital scanning technology.