Chapter 1

Animate Time

Today we live in an age where moving images are all around us: television, motion pictures, billboards, the Internet, and even cell (mobile) phones. It is hard to imagine that just a little over a century ago there was no such thing as moving images. Before we get involved with synthetically creating motion through animation, we need to explore the development of motion pictures.

Persistence of Vision

In the 19th century, many fun and amusing devices were created to evoke motion into two-dimensional objects. One of the simplest was the thaumatrope, invented by Dr. John Paris of England in 1824 to demonstrate a phenomenon known as persistence of vision. A typical thaumatrope consisted of a rapidly rotating disc. On one side ...

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