INTRODUCTION
Welearn through the functioning of our senses; sight the most precious shows us the appearance of the exterior world. Before the dawn of pictorial presentation, man was visually cognizant only of his immediate or present surroundings. On the development of realistic picturing it was possible, more or less truthfully, to become acquainted with the aspect of things not proximately perceivable. The cogency of the perceptive impression was dependent upon the graphic faithfulness of the agency—a pictorial work—that gave the visual representation of the distant thing.
It is by means of sight, too, that the mind since the beginning of alphabets has been made familiar with the thoughts and the wisdom of the past and put into relationship with the learning and reasoning of the present. These two methods of imparting knowledge—delineatoryand by inscribed symbols—have been concurrent throughout the ages.
It was nearly a century ago that Joseph Nicéphore Niepce (1765-1833), at Châlons-sur-Saône, in France, invented photography. Since that time it has been possible to fix on a surface, by physicochemical means, pictures of the exterior world. It was another way of extending man’s horizon, but a way not dependent, in the matter of literalness, upon the variations of any individual’s skill or intent, but rather upon the accuracy of material means.
Thoughts and ideas once represented and preserved by picture-writing, recorded by symbolical signs, and at last inscribed by alphabetical marks were, in 1877, registered by mere tracings on a surface and again reproduced by Mr. Edison with his phonograph. As in the photograph, the procedure was purely mechanical, and man’s artificial inventions of linear markings and arbitrary symbols were totally disregarded.
Through photography we learn of the exterior nature of absent things and the character of the views in distant places. Or it preserves thesepictorial matters in a material form for the future. The phonograph communicates to us the uttered thoughts of others or brings into our homes the melodies and songs of great artists that we should not otherwise have the opportunity to hear.
And now a new physicochemical marvel has come that apprehends, reproduces, and guards for the future another sensorial stimulus. It is the motion-picture and the stimulus is movement.
Photography and the rendering of sounds by the phonograph have both been adopted for instruction and amusement. The motion-picture also is used for these purposes, but in the main the art has been associated with our leisure hours as a means of diversion or entertainment. During the period of its growth, however, its adaptability to education has never been lost sight of. It is simply that development along this line has not been as seriously considered as it should be. Motion-pictures, it is true, that may be considered as educational are frequently shown in theatres and halls. Such, for instance, are views in strange lands, scenic wonders, and pictures showing the manufacture of some useful article or the mannerof proceeding in some field of human activity. But these are effected entirely by photography and the narration of their making does not come within the scope of this book.
Our concern is the description of the processes of making “animated cartoons,” or moving screen drawings. Related matters, of course, including the inception and the development of motion-pictures in general, will be referred to in our work. At present, of the two divisions of our subject, the art of the animated comic cartoon has been most developed. It is for this reason that so much of the book is given to an account of their production.
But on the making of animated screen drawings for scientific and educational themes little has been said. This is not to be taken as a measure of their importance.
It is interesting to regard for a moment the vicissitudes of the word cartoon. Etymologically it is related to words in certain Latin tongues for paper, card, or pasteboard. Its best-accepted employment—of bygone times—was that of designating an artist’s working-size preliminarydraft of a painting, a mural decoration, or a design for tapestry. Raphael’s cartoons in the South Kensington Museum, in London, are the best-known works of art coming under this meaning of the term. (They are, too, the usual instances given in dictionaries when this meaning is explained.) The most frequent use of the word up to recently, however, has been to specify a printed picture in which the composition bears upon some current event or political topic and in which notabilities of the day are generally caricatured. The word cartoon did not long particularize this kind of pictorial work but was soon applied to any humorous or satirical printed picture no matter whether the subject was on a topic of the day or not.
When some of the comic graphic artists began to turn their attention to the making of drawings for animated screen pictures, nothing seemed more natural than that the word “animated” should be prefixed to the term describing their products and so bringing into usage the expression “animated cartoons.” But the term did not long remain restricted to this application, asit soon was called into service by the workers in the industry to describe any film made from drawings without regard to whether the subject was of a humorous or of an educational character. Its use in this sense is perhaps justified as it forms a convenient designation in the trade to distinguish between films made from drawings and those having as their basic elements actuality, that is, people, scenes, and objects.
Teachers now are talking of “visual instruction.” They mean by this phrase in the special sense that they have given to it the use of motion-picture films for instructional purposes. Travel pictures to be used in connection with teaching geography or micro-cinematographic films for classes in biology are good examples of such films. But not all educational subjects can be depicted by the camera solely. For many themes the artist must be called in to prepare a series of drawings made in a certain way and then photographed and completed to form a film of moving diagrams or drawings.
As it is readily understood that any school topic presented in animated pictures will stimulateand hold the attention, and that the properties of things when depicted in action are more quickly grasped visually than by description or through motionless diagrams, it is likely that visual instruction by films will soon play an important part in any course of studies. Then the motion-picture projector will become the pre-eminent school apparatus and such subjects as do not lend themselves to photography will very generally need to be drawn; thereupon the preponderance of the comic cartoon will cease and the animated screen drawing of serious and worth-while themes will prevail.
E. G. L.