Humorous Phases of Funny Faces-The 1st animated movie.

On April 6, 1906, the first animated film recorded on standard picture film, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, was released. Running just three minutes, this silent short was created by British-American film pioneer J. Stuart Blackton.

The film presents a sequence of simple yet inventive scenes, including a dog jumping through a hoop and a man interacting with a hat. In a distinctive touch, the artist’s hands initially appear on screen, sketching the characters before they seemingly come to life and move independently.

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is widely regarded as the first animated film captured on standard picture film. It combines cut-out animation with stop-motion techniques. The first example of traditional animation—where each frame is drawn individually on paper and then photographed—came shortly after with the 1908 French film Fantasmagorie.

In the cartoon, hand-drawn scenes appear on a chalkboard, including a clown playing with a hat and a dog jumping through a hoop. At the start, the cartoonist’s hands are visible as he sketches the first lines in standard live-action. Afterward, stop-motion techniques make the drawings appear to complete themselves and move independently, with no artist in sight.

The film combines stop-motion and cutout animation, similar to techniques used by Edwin Porter in How Jones Lost His Roll and The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog, where letters and objects are animated. Additionally, there is a brief section in which movement is achieved by subtly altering the drawings from frame to frame.

The film runs at 20 frames per second.

sources

https://archive.org/details/Humorous_Phases_of_Funny_Faces_1906

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0000554/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorous_Phases_of_Funny_Faces

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/humorous-phases-of-funny-faces-1906/

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