The Tech Behind Cartoons Through the Ages

The earliest cartoons are arguably from Medieval times when painters would create satirical images to amuse the upper classes. Since then, the humble cartoon has changed a lot. In recent years, this has been largely down to enormous technological advances that have allowed more sophisticated renderings of these simple images. Let’s take a look at some of the ways that technology has advanced the cartoon creation process.

Émile Cohl – First Animated Cartoon

It makes sense to start, sort of, at the start. Émile Cohl was a well-known cartoon artist who decided he wanted to turn his comic strips into reality. At the time, the only way to make this happen was to draw the image at every step of its motion. So that’s exactly what he did. In 1907, he released Fantasmagorie, a motion picture that took 700 drawings to create and just 2 minutes to play in its entirety. The film starts with beautiful drawings of a clown swinging from a bar, he drops down from the bar and continues with his life. While two minutes might not seem like a huge contribution, this film single-handedly inspired a whole movement. Artists could now take the images from their imagination and bring them to life.

Raoul Barré – The Peg System

Five years later, the moving cartoon was becoming more popular. It was Raoul Barré who would invent two methods of making this unique style of film a little easier to create. These methods were called the peg system (it allowed easier registration of drawings) and the slash system (it allowed the main character to be cut out and moved across the background).

Both of these fairly simple ideas cut the time it took to create animated cartoons by a significant margin. It was around this time that the craft exploded in popularity, leading to the invention of cartoon cells in 1914. Cartoon cells are still in use by some studios today!

Paul Terry – Introduction of Music

With cells invented and the only way of making cartoons a slide-by-slide approach, it wasn’t long before somebody realized how easy it would be to synchronize them perfectly with the music. That person was Paul Terry. He released many animated cartoons that aligned flawlessly with the music. It’s something that we take for granted now, but it was revolutionary at the time.

Disney Enters the Picture

It’s the moment that we’ve all been waiting for. In 1937, Disney released its first feature-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. This film solidified Walt Disney’s place as one of the greatest cartoonists of all time. Nowadays, Disney has inspired thousands of creators, spin-offs, and even video games. All thanks to its instantly recognizable style. So, what are some of those games that Disney has inspired?

Slot Machine Games

Caption: All kinds of illustration styles are used to make cartoons today.

Online video slots are one of the most interesting ways to explore modern illustration. We’ve reached the point where we can create stunning ‘retro style’ slot games, with flat 2D images of bells, fruit and playing cards. However, nowadays the majority of online slots are designed in 3D. Using clever techniques to create light and shade allows the characters in these games to almost jump from the computer screen. These 3D techniques were pioneered by Disney, who used highlights and shadows to bring a realistic 3D element to their characters, without the need for special screens or 3D glasses.

Anime Films

Another popular cartoon illustration style is Anime. This style originated in Japan and was made famous by cartoons such as Naruto and Dragon Ball Z. Anime is a distinctive style with vibrant colours and detail-packed characters. The faces often show intense emotions and the themes are incredibly varied. Often female characters have large eyes and colorful hair, whilst men will have smaller, sharper features.

The backgrounds are also often packed with detail and symbolism, with weather changing to express the mood of the main characters. Without Disney, Anime would still exist, but without modern innovations in cartoon creation, we’d never get to see the incredible range of motion and fluidity that we do today.