Animation

Animation III. HISTORY Precursors of animation include optical toys or devices that involve incremental movement and the appearance of motion. One such device is the thaumatrope, a disk�@with complementary images (a bird and a cage, for example) printed on each side and two strings that serve as handles; when the disk is spun by twirling the strings,�@the images converge (the bird would appear to be inside the cage). The thaumatrope, which was developed …

…because of the cost of licensing the process. Most early animators used other time-saving methods. With the�@slash-and-tear system, for example, an artist would draw moving images (the characters, for example) on one sheet of paper and tear away the excess paper�@surrounding the images. The remaining portion of the sheet of paper would then be overlaid on another sheet of paper that contained static elements (such as the background), which appeared through torn areas.