ANIMATION ANARCHY PRESENTS: THE INSANE HISTORY OF ANIMATION – PART 1
ANIMATION ANARCHY PRESENTS: THE INSANE HISTORY OF ANIMATION – PART 1
“From Cave Paintings to Cat GIFs: The Glorious, Stupidly Brilliant History of Moving Pictures”
Ah, animation! That magical art form that lets us bring drawings to life—because why settle for still images when you can drive yourself insane drawing them over and over again? But before we got to today’s animation masterpieces (and whatever nightmare fuel passes for kids’ shows now), we had to go through centuries of pure trial, error, and Vaudevillian nonsense.
Buckle up, because we’re about to speed-run through the prehistory of animation, where people made images move through sheer dumb persistence, physics, and—presumably—a complete disregard for eye strain.
⸻
1. “Caveman GIFs” – The First Attempts at Animation
Before CGI, before cel animation, before even the concept of copyright infringement, there were cave people smearing charcoal on walls, desperately trying to tell a story with static images.
Ever heard of the Chauvet Cave Paintings in France? Some of these prehistoric doodles actually depict animals with multiple legs, like some kind of primordial flipbook animation. Was this an attempt at motion? Or just an early attempt at terrifying children? Historians debate it, but one thing is certain:
• These dudes accidentally invented animation 30,000 years before Disney.
• The Louvre would never let you get away with this.
Prehistoric humans had NO CLUE they were pioneering an art form that would one day lead to TikTok videos of poorly animated cats dancing to 8-bit EDM remixes.
⸻
2. “The Magic Lantern: 1600s Netflix, But Worse”
Fast forward to the 1600s, when people figured out projecting images onto walls like medieval PowerPoint presentations. Enter the Magic Lantern, the first primitive movie projector!
It worked like this:
• A light source (like a candle or someone’s suffering soul) was placed behind a painted glass slide.
• The image was then projected onto a wall, often scaring the bejeezus out of the audience.
• Sometimes, the slides were swapped quickly to create the illusion of movement.
So yes, people were watching horror movies projected on walls before cameras were even invented. This was peak 1600s Vaudeville entertainment, and people LOVED IT.
Fun fact: Magic Lanterns were also used to traumatize children with early horror stories about ghosts and demons. Because if there’s one thing history has taught us, it’s that scaring kids for fun is a universal pastime.
⸻
3. “Vaudeville and the First Attempt at Frame Rates”
Before movies, there was Vaudeville—a glorious, chaotic mess of live performances featuring comedy, music, dancing, and weirdos trying to convince people that moving pictures weren’t witchcraft.
Early Vaudeville acts incorporated animation toys (or optical illusions if you wanna sound fancy), including:
The Thaumatrope (1825) – A Victorian fidget spinner.
• A spinning disc with an image on each side (like a bird and a cage).
• When spun, the two images merged, creating a proto-GIF.
• This was mind-blowing technology back then—because these people didn’t even have toilets yet.
The Phenakistoscope (1833) – The first real animation disc.
• A rotating disc with tiny slits and sequential images.
• Spin it fast, look through the slits, and BOOM—motion!
• This was how Victorian kids entertained themselves before PlayStation.
The Zoetrope (1866) – The Netflix of the 19th century.
• A cylindrical version of the Phenakistoscope.
• Instead of watching one image at a time, you could see multiple frames moving in a loop.
• This was entertainment before YouTube Shorts rotted our attention spans.
At the time, people were so impressed by these contraptions that crowds gathered to watch a stick figure hop in a circle. Nowadays, you can barely get people to watch Oscar-winning films unless they’re on a streaming service.
⸻
4. “The Praxinoscope: The Upgrade Nobody Asked For” (1877)
Then came the Praxinoscope, because some French guy named Émile Reynaud said:
“What if I took the Zoetrope, made it more complicated, and flexed on everyone?”
The Praxinoscope did the same thing as the Zoetrope, but with mirrors instead of slits. Why mirrors? Because apparently, people in the 1800s just loved looking at themselves.
It was a MASSIVE hit! Reynaud even projected his animations in Paris in 1892, basically inventing the first animated feature presentation.
This means that one French dude in the 1800s casually predicted modern cinema while the rest of the world was still figuring out electricity.
⸻
5. “Eadweard Muybridge: The Guy Who Accidentally Created Film” (1878)
Ah yes, Eadweard Muybridge—a man whose name sounds like someone sneezed while spelling “Edward.”
This guy is responsible for the first-ever recorded motion sequence, all thanks to a horse bet.
• In 1878, Muybridge was asked to settle a dumb argument: Do horses ever have all four hooves off the ground while running?
• Instead of arguing like a normal person, he set up 12 cameras along a racetrack and rigged them to take pictures when the horse ran by.
• BAM! The first-ever stop-motion animation was born.
• He then turned those images into a moving sequence, which led to the development of film.
So yes, the entire film industry was created because of a rich guy’s dumb bet about a horse.
Thanks, Muybridge. Now we have The Emoji Movie.
⸻
What We Learned Today:
1. Cavemen invented the first GIFs without realizing it.
2. Magic Lanterns were just spooky PowerPoints.
3. The Victorians were so starved for entertainment that they lost their minds over a spinning disc.
4. Muybridge accidentally invented movies while trying to win a horse-related debate.
5. Without these weirdos, animation wouldn’t exist.
⸻
What’s Next?
In Part 2, we’ll cover the absolute madness of early film animation, where animators physically destroyed their hands drawing thousands of frames BY HAND because computers didn’t exist yet.
Expect grueling labor, ink-stained nightmares, and the first time Walt Disney realized he could destroy people’s souls in the name of cartoons.
Until then, go stare at a spinning disc and pretend you’re living in 1866.
⸻
Stay Anarchic, Stay Animated!
(And please, for the love of all that is holy, like, share, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, because Muybridge didn’t lose sleep over a horse for us to be broke.)
