Welcome to the community hub built on top of the 1898 in animation Wikipedia article.
Here, you can discuss, collect, and organize anything related to 1898 in animation. The
purpose of the hub is to connect people, foster deeper knowledge, and help improve
the root Wikipedia article.
November: The German toy manufacturer Gebrüder Bing introduced their toy "kinematograph",[1] at a toy convention in Leipzig . In late 1898 and early 1899, other toy manufacturers in Germany and France, including Ernst Plank, Georges Carette, and Lapierre, started selling similar devices. The toy cinematographs were basically traditional toy magic lanterns, adapted with one or two small spools that used standard "Edison perforation" 35mm film, a crank, and a shutter. These projectors were intended for the same type of "home entertainment" toy market that most of the manufacturers already provided with praxinoscopes and magic lanterns. Apart from relatively expensive live-action films, the manufacturers produced many cheaper films by printing lithographed drawings. These animations were probably made in black-and-white from around 1898 or 1899. The pictures were often traced from live-action films (much like the later rotoscoping technique). These very short films typically depicted a simple repetitive action and most were designed to be projected as a loop - playing endlessly with the film ends put together. The lithograph process and the loop format follow the tradition that was set by the stroboscopic disc, zoetrope and praxinoscope.[2][3]
Specific date unknown: The Motograph Moving Picture Book was published in London at the start of 1898 by Bliss, Sands & Co.[4] It came with a "transparency" with black stripes to add the illusion of motion to the pictures in the book (13 in the original black and white edition and 23 in the later color edition). The illustrations were credited to "F.J. Vernay, Yorick, &c.".[5] The book is an early form of stereography. [6]
January 2: Dick Huemer, American animator, comic strip artist, and illustrator (redesigned and developed Koko the Clown, created Fitz (Ko-Ko's canine companion), created Scrappy, storyboard artist for Dumbo), (d. 1979).[7][8]
