Animation Day

What the day is

Animation Day is observed on October 28. The date marks Emile Reynaud's first public projection of his Theatre Optique in Paris in 1892, where hand-painted images on long strips were projected as moving stories for a paying audience.

That was three years before the Lumiere brothers' first film screening. Animation predates live-action cinema.

Origin and background

The medium rests on a perceptual fact: shown a sequence of still images fast enough, the visual system constructs continuous motion. Early devices such as the zoetrope and praxinoscope exploited it mechanically before film existed at all.

The industrial history runs through a few technical shifts. Cel animation, painting characters on transparent sheets laid over painted backgrounds, made mass production practical by removing the need to redraw the background for every frame. The multiplane camera added depth by separating layers at different distances. Computer animation then replaced the entire apparatus, though the principles of timing and weight developed by hand animators transferred directly.

The dominant assumption in the English-speaking world, that animation is for children, is a commercial accident rather than a property of the medium. Japanese animation has long served every audience and genre, and animated features aimed at adults have a substantial tradition in Europe and elsewhere.

Labor conditions are a persistent issue in the industry. Animation is extremely labor-intensive, work is frequently outsourced, and studios in several countries have faced sustained criticism over hours and pay, particularly in television production.

How to take part

• Watch something animated that is not aimed at children.
• Make a flipbook. Twenty drawings in the corner of a notebook teaches more about timing than any explanation.
• Try stop motion with a phone. Free apps handle the frame capture and the results are immediate.
• Watch an early silent animation and notice how much was solved before sound.
• Read the credits on an animated feature. The number of people involved is genuinely startling.