Pioneers of Animation

George Melies 

George Melies was a French illusionist and filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest days of cinema.He was very innovative in the use of special effects. He accidentally discovered the stop trick, or substitution, in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, dissolves, and hand-painted colour in his films.

Winsor McCay

 Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator, best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and the animated cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur.

Lotte Reiniger

Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger  was a German silhouette animator and film director. She was well known for her cut out silhouette animation. 

Persistence of Vision

Persistence of Vision means that when we look at a series of images on after another, but that we slightly 
different to the one before, our brains are fooled into thinking that it is a moving image. 

A form of early stop motion animation is called a 'Zoetrope'. The zoetrope worked on the same principles as the phenakistiscope, but the pictures were drawn on a strip which could be set around the bottom third of a metal drum, with the slits now cut in the upper section of the drum. The drum was mounted on a spindle so that it could be spun, and viewers looking through the slits would see the cartoon strip form a moving image. The faster the drum is spun, 
the smoother the image that is produced.