Cartoon: The original meaning was in fine art, where cartoon meant a preparatory drawing for a piece of art, such as a painting or tapestry. The modern meaning refers to both humorous illustrations in print and animated films.
The first animation to appear on film was by a newspaper cartoonist called J. Stuart Blackton on the 6th of April 1906. The film 'Humorous phases of funny faces' was animated on a chalk board; the film seemed to have no real narrative. It was not seen as a cartoon in the traditional sense but still complies with today’s convention as a hand drawn image.
The film considered the first fully animated cartoon ever made was by a French artist called Émile Cohl, and was called "Fantasmagorie”. The film contained 700 drawings and ran for about two minutes. The images where then made negative to give chalk board look similar to Blackton. This cartoon contained scenes that seemed to include a basic narrative structure for the characters.
In 1914, Winsor McCay produced a cartoon which is considered to have the first true character animation ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’. The cartoon was the first to show a character that seemed to have its own personality and portrait emotions.
The first feature length cartoon was said to have been released in 1917 by an Argentinean cartoonist called Quirino Cristiani, the film 'El Apóstol' contained 58,000 hand drawn frames, and supposedly had characters with similar aspects to ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ whom had recognisable personality and characteristics. The film also had a satire narrative structure, with President Hipólito Yrigoyen ascending to the heavens to use Jupiter's thunderbolts to cleanse Buenos Aires of immorality and corruption. The result is a burnt city. This film is now a lost film. (Wikipedia) Another feature films that followed the similar conventions were ; Adventures of Prince Achmed and directed by German Lotte Reiniger and French/Hungarian Berthold Bartosch.
Silent cartoon ran along side its cousin, the Silent film. One of my favourite shorts of this period is the 'Felix the cat episode ‘Felix Dopes it out' (1924). It is similar to the slapstick/ situation comedy of Charlie Chaplin, were the characters emotions is played by over the top expressions, with rediculous plot lines.
A decade later in 1928 came the Golden Age of U.S. animation; this is the period when sound was introduced, although the first cartoon to use synchronized sound was Max Fleischer's 'My Old Kentucky Home' in 1926. The films were usually shorts of 5-10 minutes and shown before feature films in American movie theatres. These brought around the birth of such well known characters as; Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Popeye and so on.
Feature length animation with sound also started in this period, most notably with Walt Disney's first films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia etc… In the 1960’s theatrical animation started dropping in interest as the medium of television animation became more popular.
Feature length animations films seemed to have the same conventions as any film genre, for instance snow white and the seven dwarfs is a fantasy/ fairy tale, the only difference is, is that it is animated.
The shorts that I have watched seem to have similar conventions to any of the cartoons nowadays, they seem to be sit-com orientated and/or use the fact they have no creative boundaries well.
Now that you hopefully understand more about the history of the cartoon genre. In my next blog i will be exploring the conventions of the cartoon genre from the arrival of cartoons on television, to present day mature cartoons.
Filmography
Humorous phases of funny faces - 1906 - J. Stuart Blackton
Felix the Cat - Felix Dopes It Out - 1924 - Otto Messmer & Pat Sullivan
Fantasmagorie - 1908 - Émile Cohl
References
Barrier, J. Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press
Online References
Wikipedia. (continuous). History Of Animation. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_animation . Last accessed 24 March 2010.
Wikipedia. (Continuous). Animated Cartoons. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animated_cartoon . Last accessed 24 March 2010.
Wikipedia. (continuous). Cartoon. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon . Last accessed 24 March 2010.
Wikipedia. (continuous). Émile Cohl. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Cohl . Last accessed 24 March 2010.
Wikipedia. (continuous). Character Animation. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_animation . Last accessed 24 March 2010
Wikipedia. (continuous). El Apóstol. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ap%C3%B3stol . Last accessed 24 March 2010
Wikipedia. (continuous). Animated Cartoon, Television . Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animated_cartoon#Television . Last accessed 24 March 2010
You've got a lot to do here. There's nowhere near enough content as yet, and what there is, whilst interesting, is lacking in sufficiently academic research. You need books, journals, and online academic research not just Wikipedia. The formatting and proofreading need attention and the references need substantial improvement. If you can get this done in the time frame I think you're more than capable of getting a good mark, but it needs a sustained effort.
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