South Park, while incredibly controversial, is definitely one of the most popular and influential animated shows of all time. Due to its crude animation style, it appeals to a large audience who are often swayed away from animated shows or films because of how complex they try to be. The show follows four young boys and their odd and surreal antics through day-to-day life.
One of the most interesting things about South Park is that the creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, made the pilot episode entirely using cut-out animation. This episode took the longest time to make, so all the episodes since then were created using computer software which imitates the style of cut-out animation. They both stated that they chose to continue with the cut-out animation style as they liked how unique it looked, due to the different body parts being moved accidently and adding a jumpy style of movement.
One of their main influences for the show is actually the work of Terry Gilliam, who created most of the animation for Monty Python. The creators state that as they were life-long fans of Gilliam’s work, they always wanted to create something similar to what he created, and when they had the opportunity to make South Park they could not turn it down.
Monty Python is a group of six British comedians, and is one of the most recognisable comedy acts of all time. Their work is often credited as a major influence to many current comedians, both British and from other places around the world. Made up of Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam (American but born in Britain), Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, they redefined comedy throughout their original run from 1969 to 1983.
The main animation for the group was actually done by Terry Gilliam, who also directed several Hollywood films such as Fear and Loathing in Los Vegas and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. He began work as a cartoon artist, writing a strip for Help!, which would often feature John Cleese. After moving to England, he animated several sequences for children’s TV show Do Not Adjust Your Set which also featured Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin. He originally wasn’t an official member of the group, and was only credited as an animator, but was eventually made a full member of Monty Python.
His cartoons linked the show's sketches together, and defined the group's visual language in other forms of media, like LPs and title sequences for their films. Gilliam's animations mix his own art, characterized by soft gradients and odd, bulbous shapes, with backgrounds and moving cut-outs from antique photographs, mostly from the Victorian era. His animated work was so well made and influential, Gilliam was also given a BAFTA Special Award in 1969 for the graphics and animations in Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Saul Bass, similar to Lotte Reiniger, was one of the early pioneers of the worldwide animation scene. He was most famous for his work on title sequences, film posters and also corporate logos. Not only did he win an Academy Award, but he was also credited with working with Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese.
In his early years, he designed print advertising posters for films like Champion and The Moon Is Blue, directed by Otto Preminger. Things changed for Bass when Preminger, so impressed with a poster he had designed for a different film called Carmen Jones, asked him to create the title sequence for the same film. This was when Bass realised just how important the title and closing sequences for films were. He saw the opening sequence as an opportunity to captivate the audience within the earliest moments of the film.
His main use of cut-out animation was for the title sequence for Anatomy of Murder, and also for a fully animated short sequence as an epilogue for Around the World in 80 Days. Many TV shows and movies use his ideas and even pay homage to his work, particularly those set in the 1960s which is when Bass rose to prominence. Two films that use animated title sequences like Bass’ are Catch Me If You Can and X-Men: First Class. One major TV series that also uses a similar title sequence is that of the AMC series Man Men. However, in theory any opening sequence of a movie, animated or not, could be said to pay tribute to Bass due to his excessive work in this field.
Lotte Reiniger was one of the first major pioneers in the world of Animation – more specifically silhouette animation – preceding even the likes of Walt Disney by over ten years. Her most famous pictures include The Adventures of Prince Achmed and The Magic Flute. She was born in Charlottenburg on the 2nd June 1899, and died on the 19th June 1981.
One of her first key influences was the films of Georges Méliès, especially for their use of ground-breaking special effects. Another big influence was the films of actor/director Paul Wegener, known today for The Golem. She joined the theatre group that Wegener was part of, The Theatre of Max Reinhardt, which is where she started to create silhouette portraits and elaborate title cards, many of which went on to feature in Wegener’s future films. In 1918, Reiniger animated wooden rats for Wegener's Der Rattenfänger von Hameln, or The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The success of this work got her admitted into the Institut für Kulturforschung, or the Institute for Cultural Research.
In terms of her own influence on other artists, Bruno J. Böttge was the only one to directly reference Reiniger and her work in his own features. Another artist using her techniques was Michel Ocelot, starting with the silhouette format in the 1989 television series Ciné si, along with others of his own invention, in his silhouette film Princes et princesses. Reiniger anticipated Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks by a decade, by devising the first multi-plane camera for certain effects. In addition to Reiniger's silhouette actors, Prince Achmed boasted backgrounds by Walter Ruttmann and a score by Wolfgang Zeller. Additional effects were added by Carl Koch and Berthold Bartosch.
The device was first theorised by Thomas Edison, but Edison’s employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892 developed most of it. Dickinson and his team also developed the Kinetograph, which was an early motion picture camera with stop-and-go film movement. This was used to photograph movies for in-house experiments and eventually commercial Kinetoscope presentations.
While a prototype was shown at a convention of the National Federations of Women’s Club on May 20th 1891, but it was not fully publically demonstrated until May 9th 1893 at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. An early prototype of the Kinetoscope was the Kinetophone, which was an actual attempt by Edison and Dickson to create a sound film system.
A man called Charles Reynaud first invented the Praxinoscope in 1877, and it was the first device to overcome the distortion of pictures caused by viewing through the little moving slots. As the image produced was much better than any previous device, the Praxinoscope quickly replaced the Zoetrope in popularity.
A series of pictures or images are placed inside an outer cylinder, this is done so each picture is reflected on the inside mirrors. The number of images used must always be equal to the number of mirrors inside, so that each picture is reflected onto its own mirror. When the outer cylinder rotates, the quick motion of the images makes it so there is an illusion of all the pictures moving together to create one image.
By using this method, Reynaud found a way to transmit a series of pictures onto the screen, and he called it a ‘Theatre Optique’. The average, normal Praxinoscope can only accommodate one or two seconds of animation because of the limited amount of pictures that it actually contains. However, Reynaud used a long roll of paper increase the number of images so he was able to put on a much better show for the audience.
The Zoetrope was invented in 1834 by William Horner, who actually originally called it the Daedalum, or ‘Wheel of the Devil’. It was also based on Plateau’s Phenakistoscope, but it was more convenient as it did not require a viewing mirror and more than one person could view the images inside at any given time. Despite this, the invention was actually forgotten for 30 years until M. Bradley and William F. Lincoln patented it in the UK and America respectively, with Lincoln renaming the Daedalum the Zoetrope, or the ‘Wheel of Life’.
The Zoetrope was the third major optical toy, after the Phenakistoscope and the Thaumatrope, to use the persistence of motion principle to create an illusion of movement. It consists of a simple drum with an open top, supported on a central axis.
Sequences of hand-drawn pictures on strips of paper are placed around the inner bottom of the drum. Then, slots are cut at equal distances around the outer surface of the drum, just above where the picture strips were to be positioned.
To create an illusion of motion, the drum is spun; the faster the rate of spin, the smoother the progression of images. A viewer can look through the wall of the zoetrope from any point around it, and see a rapid progression of images. Because of its design, more than one person could use the zoetrope at the same time.
In 1832, with the help of his sons, Joseph Plateau invented the ‘spindle viewer’, or as it’s more commonly known – the Phenakistoscope. It was also independently invented in the same year by a man called Simon Von Stamper of Vienna, Austria. Plateau had originally been inspired by Michael Faraday, who had invented a similar device called ‘Michael Faraday’s Wheel’, and Peter Mark Roget, the compiler of ‘Roget’s Thesaurus’. Faraday’s device consisted of two discs that spun in opposite directions of each other. Plateau took this another step, adapting Faraday’s device into a toy, the Phenakistoscope.
The Phenakistoscope uses the persistence of motion to create an illusion that it is actually moving. This idea had already been recognised by the Greek mathematician Euclid and in later experiments by Isaac Newton; it was not until 1829 that the idea was finally published by Joseph Plateau.
The Phenakistoscope consisted of two discs mounted on the same axis. The first disc had slots around the edge, and the second contained drawings of successive action, drawn around the disc in circles. Unlike Faraday's Wheel, whose pair of discs spun in opposite directions, a Phenakistoscope's discs spin together in the same direction. When viewed in a mirror through the first disc's slots, the pictures on the second disc will appear to move.
After going into the market, it received a few other names including Phantasmascope and Fantoscope. It was very successful for about two years; however it was pushed out by William George Horner, who invented the Zoetrope. The Zoetrope offered the public two large improvements – it did not require a viewing mirror and most importantly more than one person could view the pictures at any time.