1884 in animation

Events in 1884 in animation.

Events

• March: Appointment of a commission by the University of Pennsylvania, including the University's professors William Pepper, Joseph Leidy, George Frederick Barker, Lewis M. Haupt and emeritus Harrison Allen, as well as Thomas Eakins and Edward Hornor Coates of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. They would work with the photographer Eadweard Muybridge in a scientific study focused on the analysis of animal and human movement. The project would eventually last more than three years, and costs rose to almost $30,000, but the University believed the unexpected amount of time and money to be well spent. The huge body of work was thought to be of everlasting importance to science and art and it would take years to examine all the material critically. ^[1] The study was based on Muybridge's previous work on chronophotography and the zoöpraxiscope (animal action viewer). ^{[2] [3]}
• March 28: Opening of the amusement center Eden Musée in New York City. It featured a changing selection of specialty entertainment, including magic lantern shows and marionettes. ^[4] The magic lantern was not only a direct ancestor of the motion picture projector as a means for visual storytelling, but it could itself be used to project moving images. Some suggestion of movement could be achieved by alternating between pictures of different phases of a motion, but most magic lantern "animations" used two glass slides projected together — one with the stationary part of the picture and the other with the part that could be set in motion by hand or by a simple mechanism. ^{[5] : 689–699}
• Since Spring 1884: From Spring 1884 to Autumn 1885, Eadweard Muybridge and his team produced over 100,000 images, ^[6] mostly at an outdoor studio on the grounds of the University of Pennsylvania's northeast corner of 36th and Pine, recording the motions of animals from the veterinary hospital, and from humans: University professors, students, athletes, Blockley Almshouse patients, and local residents. ^[7] Thomas Eakins worked with him briefly, although the painter preferred working with multiple exposures on a single negative, whereas Muybridge preferred capturing motion through the use of multiple cameras. ^[8] Since 1879, Muybridge was working on the zoöpraxiscope (animal action viewer), a projection device that created cyclical animations of animal movement, incorporating technologies from photography, the magic lantern and the zoetrope. The photographer created painted sequences on the glass zoöpraxiscope discs that were based on his motion-study photographs to produce an early form of animation. Muybridge used these to illustrate his lectures that were presented to audiences in the U.S. and Europe, marking his contribution to photography and film in relation to the "experience of time within modernity." ^{[2] [3]}
• Specific date unknown: In 1884, the Scottish artist Helen Campbell D'Olier lectured on the subject of Christian illuminated manuscripts in Alexandra College, showing magic lantern-slides of her work in reproducing them. ^[9]

Births

May

• May 20: Leon Schlesinger, American film producer (Warner Bros. Cartoons), (d. 1949). ^{[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]}

August

• August 1: Lajos Jámbor, Hungarian-American painter, illustrator, and background artist for animation (background artist for the Fleischer Studios, worked on the backgrounds of the animated feature film Gulliver's Travels ), (d. 1954). ^{[16] [17] [18]}

November

• November 19: Robert Collard, French writer, illustrator, novelist, painter, art critic, animator, and film director, (founder of his own animation studio, the Lortac workshop), (d. 1973). ^{[19] [20] [21]}

References

1. University of Pennsylvania (1888). Animal locomotion : the Muybridge work at the University of Pennsylvania : the method and the result. Webster Family Library of Veterinary Medicine. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott Co.
2. "Eadweard Muybridge: Defining Modernities". Arts and Humanities Research Council, Kingston University, London. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
3. "Motion Pictures: The Zoopraxiscope". Tate Museum. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
4. Stulman Dennett, Andrea (October 1997). Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America. NYU Press. p. 50. ISBN   978-0814718865.
5. Rossell, Deac (2005). "The Magic Lantern and Moving Images before 1800" (PDF). Barockberichte (40/41).
6. Eadweard Muybridge (1899). E. Muybridge, Animals in motion. An electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal progressive movements, 1899. Mart - Archivio del '900. Chapman & Hall.
7. "A new way of thinking about motion, movement, and the concept of time". Penn Today. University of Pennsylvania. 17 February 2020. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
8. Brookman, Philip; Braun, Marta; Keller, Corey; Solnit, Rebecca (2010). Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change. Germany: Steidl. p. 83. ISBN   978-3-86521-926-8 . Retrieved 27 February 2022.
9. D'Olier, Helen Campbell. "Unpublished lecture in the Library in Trinity College Dublin".
10. Ellenberger, Allan R. (2001-05-01). Celebrities in Los Angeles Cemeteries: A Directory. McFarland. ISBN   978-0-7864-5019-0.
11. Barrier, Michael (2003-11-06). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-983922-3.
12. "Billboard". Nielsen Business Media : 113. February 7, 1948. leon schlesinger.
13. Barrier, Michael (1999). Pg. 323.
14. Schneider, Steve (1988). That's all folks! : the art of Warner Bros. animation. Henry Holt and Company. pp. 88–90. ISBN   9781854102904.
15. Barrier (1999); pg. 467
16. Heritage Comics Auctions #815 Pini Collection Catalog. Ivy Press. 2005. ISBN   9781932899504.
17. "LOUIS JAMBOR, 69, VERSATILE ARTIST; Portraitist and Mural Painter Who Also, Did Book, Film Work Succumbs Here". The New York Times . 1954-06-12. Retrieved 2020-02-22.
18. "Lajos (Louis) Jambor". Artnet.com. Retrieved 2020-02-22.
19. "Robert Lortac". lambiek.net. Retrieved May 20, 2020.
20. "Robert Lortac".
21. Eric Le Roy, « Filmographies Robert Lortac », 1895. Mille huit cent quatre-vingt-quinze, no 59, 2009, p. 289-324 (lire en ligne [archive])

Sources

• Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age . Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN   0-19-516729-5.