A History of Animation

1910 – 1919 · 10 events

The 1910s

In ten years animation acquired the two things it had been missing: characters an audience could care about, and a production system capable of making them on time.

What changed in this period

The decade opens with a newspaper cartoonist proving that a drawing could act. His dinosaur breathes, hesitates, sulks when scolded and brightens when praised — behavior, not mechanics. Audiences responded to a personality rather than a trick, and the entire subsequent history of the medium follows from that response.

Meanwhile the practical problem of volume was being solved. Redrawing an entire scene for every frame was unsustainable, so studios patented ways to separate what moves from what stays still: transparent sheets laid over a fixed background, registration pegs to hold them in place, and a licensing regime that made the method an industry standard almost overnight.

A second labor-saving idea arrived in the middle of the decade — filming a live performer and tracing the footage — which gave animators reliable human movement and, later, an aesthetic of its own.

The first animated features were also attempted, in Buenos Aires rather than New York or Paris, and the first animated documentary reconstructed a wartime sinking that no camera had recorded. By 1919 a black cat with a detachable tail had become one of the most recognizable characters in the world, and animation had its first true international star.

The record

Every documented event, 1910 – 1919

Listed in order, with context, technique, sources and related events shown in full.

  • 1911 April 8, 1911

    Winsor McCay animates Little Nemo

    McCay hand-drew and hand-colored four thousand sheets of rice paper to make his comic-strip characters stretch, merge and dance inside a live-action framing story about a cartoonist's bet.

    United States Hand-drawn on paper Short film
    Artist or studio
    Winsor McCay, Vitagraph release
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    McCay was the most celebrated newspaper cartoonist in America, known for the draftsmanship and perspective of his Sunday strips. He financed the animation himself.

    Why it mattered

    It set a standard of drawing quality and fluidity far above anything then in commercial production, and demonstrated that animation could be an authored artwork rather than a studio novelty.

    What followed

    McCay's insistence on full animation — every frame drawn, no shortcuts — became the ideal against which the American studio system measured itself for decades.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1912

    Starewicz makes puppet drama with insects

    A domestic infidelity comedy performed entirely by articulated insect puppets, filmed with careful staging, cutting and character performance rather than as a novelty demonstration.

    Russia and the Soviet Union Stop motion Short film
    Artist or studio
    Ladislas Starewicz
    Country or region
    Russia and the Soviet Union

    Historical context

    Starewicz was a museum entomologist who turned to puppet construction after failing to film live beetles, and worked in Moscow before emigrating to France.

    Why it mattered

    It is the earliest surviving puppet film to sustain a full dramatic narrative with acting, and it proved that stop motion could carry emotion rather than only spectacle.

    What followed

    Starewicz's articulated armatures and performance-first approach influenced the entire European puppet tradition and, through it, later studios working in the same technique.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1913

    Bray launches the first animated series produced on a studio schedule

    A recurring boastful adventurer starred in regularly released shorts made by a division of labor: separate people for design, drawing, inking and photography.

    United States Hand-drawn on paper Short film
    Artist or studio
    John Randolph Bray, Bray Productions
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Bray came from illustration and approached animation as a manufacturing problem, aiming at the weekly release schedule the distribution system demanded.

    Why it mattered

    It introduced the studio production line to animation, separating creative and mechanical tasks and making sustained output possible for the first time.

    What followed

    Every American animation studio through the 1980s used a version of Bray's division of labor, and the recurring-character series became the industry's basic commercial unit.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1914 February 8, 1914 Full record

    Gertie the Dinosaur performs on stage in Chicago

    McCay appeared on stage beside a projected dinosaur, issuing commands she obeyed, ignored or resented, and finishing by apparently stepping into the screen to ride away on her back.

    United States Hand-drawn on paper Short film
    Artist or studio
    Winsor McCay
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The film was designed as a vaudeville act with precisely timed cues, and only later released with a live-action prologue for general theatrical distribution.

    Why it mattered

    Gertie is the first animated character with a legible personality — reluctant, playful, easily hurt — and the performance established that audiences would form an emotional relationship with a drawing.

    What followed

    Character animation as a discipline begins here. Every studio that later built its business on recognizable personalities was working from the premise McCay demonstrated on that stage.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1914 December 1914 (patent filed) Full record

    The cel process is patented and licensed

    Drawing moving figures on transparent celluloid sheets laid over a single painted background, held in alignment by registration pegs, eliminated the need to redraw static elements for every frame.

    United States Cel animation Technique and tools
    Artist or studio
    Earl Hurd and John Randolph Bray, Bray-Hurd Process Company
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Hurd filed the celluloid overlay patent in December 1914; Bray held complementary patents, and the two pooled them into a licensing company in 1915.

    Why it mattered

    This is the single most consequential production innovation in animation history. It cut labor dramatically, made backgrounds richer, and separated the moving from the static — a division that still structures the work.

    What followed

    The cel defined the look, cost and workflow of animation for roughly eighty years, until digital ink and paint replaced the physical sheet in the 1990s. Licensing fees also concentrated the American industry among firms that could afford them.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1915 1915 (patent filed)

    Max Fleischer files the rotoscope patent

    A device projecting live-action film frame by frame onto a drawing surface allowed animators to trace recorded movement, producing naturalistic action at a fraction of the observational effort.

    United States Rotoscoping Technique and tools
    Artist or studio
    Max Fleischer, later Fleischer Studios
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Fleischer built the first version at home, filming his brother Dave in a clown suit. The patent was granted in 1917 and the technique debuted in the Out of the Inkwell series.

    Why it mattered

    It gave animation reliable access to human movement and introduced a lasting argument about the relationship between drawing and photography that the medium has never fully resolved.

    What followed

    Rotoscoping was used for realistic figures in features from the 1930s onward, revived for stylized adult animation in the 1970s, and reappeared as digital motion tracking and reference-based performance work.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1917 November 9, 1917

    El Apóstol, the first animated feature, opens in Buenos Aires

    A satirical feature about the Argentine president, animated with jointed cardboard cutouts over drawn backgrounds, ran roughly seventy minutes — the first known animated feature film.

    Argentina Cutout and silhouette Feature film
    Artist or studio
    Quirino Cristiani, produced by Federico Valle
    Country or region
    Argentina

    Historical context

    Cristiani, an Italian-born animator working in Buenos Aires, devised a cutout system that let a small team produce feature length on a modest budget.

    Why it mattered

    It establishes that feature-length animation was attempted, completed and commercially exhibited twenty years before the form is usually said to have begun, and outside the recognized production centers.

    What followed

    No print survives; the negatives were lost in studio fires. The film is a reminder of how much early animation history depends on documentation rather than surviving works.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1918

    The Fleischers launch Out of the Inkwell

    A clown climbs out of an inkwell into the animator's live-action studio, combining rotoscoped movement, hybrid compositing and a recurring self-referential premise.

    United States Rotoscoping Short film
    Artist or studio
    Max and Dave Fleischer, Bray Productions
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The series ran through the 1920s and made the Fleischers the principal creative rivals to the emerging Californian studios.

    Why it mattered

    It integrated rotoscoping, live-action interaction and a durable character into a commercially successful series, demonstrating that technical innovation could be a selling point.

    What followed

    The Fleischer studio's technical culture — rotoscope, bouncing-ball sing-alongs, stereoptical backgrounds — made it the most inventive American studio of the silent and early sound period.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1918 July 20, 1918

    McCay reconstructs the Lusitania sinking

    Twenty-five thousand drawings reconstruct the 1915 torpedoing of a passenger liner, an event no camera recorded, in a twelve-minute film presented as documentary evidence rather than entertainment.

    United States Cel animation Short film
    Artist or studio
    Winsor McCay
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    McCay worked on the film for close to two years, adopting cel technique for the first time to manage the volume of drawing.

    Why it mattered

    It is the first animated documentary and the first sustained use of animation for serious, non-comic subject matter, arguing that drawing could reconstruct reality where photography could not.

    What followed

    The idea that animation can depict the unrecordable — memory, testimony, historical reconstruction — underpins a documentary tradition that continues into contemporary festival and awards-level work.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1919 November 9, 1919

    Felix the Cat debuts in Feline Follies

    A black cat with a plastic body and a detachable tail, capable of turning his own features into tools and vehicles, became the first globally merchandised animated character.

    United States Cel animation Short film
    Artist or studio
    Otto Messmer, Pat Sullivan Studio
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Messmer animated and largely designed the character while Sullivan owned and promoted the studio, a credit dispute that persisted for decades.

    Why it mattered

    Felix established the silent cartoon's central pleasure — a character whose body obeys graphic rather than physical logic — and proved that an animated figure could sustain an international licensing business.

    What followed

    Merchandising as a revenue stream, the star-character studio model, and the surreal transformation gag all became standard practice because Felix worked commercially.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

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