Let's start learning a little bit about the history  of the principles of animation, where they originated from  because they didn't always exist,  but they're not as old as you might expect. Principles  Of animation, It's always important  to learn the history of an art form, not just  for appreciation of its own merit,  but to use the knowledge of all the people that went  before you towards your own efforts  creating in that art medium. And in our case, it's animation. So the animation principles as we know them today,  were actually created in the 1930s  and onwards by a group  of nine animators at Disney Animation Studios. And they were affectionately referred to  as the Nine Old Men. Two of them published a book in the 1980s called  The Illusion of Life.

And it would be a really good extracurricular reading  for you if you're interested in diving deeper into  the history of animation, especially Disney animation,  where these principles originated from,  they originated from these guys who were testing animation  and short films, and they were called The Silly Symphonies. And it's a similar tactic  that Pixar has used recently when they actually had a studio  in Vancouver, Canada dedicated to creating short films  to help push the medium of animation. And that's kind of an example  of history repeating itself in learning from history. And where Pixar took a page outta the book  of Disney animation to focus on short films  so they could do shorter project cycles and learn  and apply all the things they learned from a short  film into their future films. And so that's what Disney was doing,  and where they started to realize  that there were certain principles that could be applied  to all their animation, and that's where they started  to codify these principles  and what we're gonna learn in this course. But let's go back and stay in the 1930s  and forties for a moment.

That is considered the golden age of animation. Back then, animation was kind  of considered like a carnival or a magic trick. And one really good historic example is Gerie the dinosaur. In 1914, Windsor McKay had this kind of vaudevillian acts  where he would stand on stage in front of a big screen  and kind of command this animated dinosaur around on screen. And no one had seen anything like it before. Felix the Cat is another good example from this time period  that the public saw regularly,  but that character kind of lost steam over time  and the general public  and, you know, production never thought  that animation could make the leap from kind  of this magic trick, uh, carnival show into feature films  and making the leap into some,  from something very short into something long like a feature  film, and compete with what at the time were called talkies,  which are movies that had sound.

Um, so it was never really considered at that time  that things that they saw  as basically like a little trick could compete with the big,  you know, productions of something like a live action movie  in this golden age of animation. There were other studios in the game too. It wasn't just Disney working on animation. You had Warner Brothers, UPA Fleischer Studios,  and 20th Century Fox Terry Tunes. But one of my favorite interpretations  of Superman came from Fleischer Studios. So your assignment for this lesson is going to be  to watch a few cartoons  to see the progression of animation over time.

Start with one of the silly symphonies called the Skeleton  Dance from 1929,  and then look up the Fleischer Studio's Superman  interpretation in 1941 called The Mad Scientist. I'll put links to those two animated short films in the PDF  that comes along with the course, but links change. And so you might have to search for them by name  as well on YouTube, but I want you  to notice the difference in quality just over a decade from  1929 to 1941, how far the medium  of animation came. And that is in part due to these principles  that you're gonna learn about, because over  that time period, that's when the nine old men from Disney  were starting to codify these 12 principles  and apply them into their animation. But keep in mind, there's so much more  to learn about animation than just these 12 principles we're  gonna learn in this course. But it's where you kind of have to necessarily start  to begin your journey as an animator.

But one important other thing to notice is as we go  through the course and learn these principles,  we're also gonna learn different mediums so  that you can really take to heart  that these principles don't rely on any one  medium of animation. So for example, you could animate squash  and stretch with a post-it note like we did with the line. You could animate it with a stop motion, clay,  you could do it in 3D animation. It doesn't really matter. What we're gonna learn is gonna be able to apply  to every medium of animation. That's why it's so important  to learn this early in your animation journey so  that you can take this toolkit  and begin to apply it to all these different kind  of interests and, and avenues  that animation can take you down.

But keep in mind, there's so much more  to learn than just these 12,  but it's the perfect place to start. And the other thing that's really fun to do is  to see these animation principles applied out in the wild. You know, you'll be watching an animation or uh, a movie  or something, and you can start  to see these things applied in the real world as, uh,  now that you'll know how to identify them, you can begin  to call 'em out and see how they're applied in different  situations, which is really cool. And it, it will help further your education,  which is why the assignment is to do a little homework. And it's some of the best homework is why I like animation,  is because you get to watch fun stuff. So in this lesson, we learned the backstory of animation,  where it came from, who started codifying these principles.

You have an assignment to follow. So, uh, you know, nothing pen to paper to do,  but just to begin to train your eye to see the differences. And even if you can't articulate what they are yet,  you'll be able to begin to articulate that  as you learn the principles throughout the course. So now that we have an appreciation of the backstory of  where animation has come from, let's begin  to learn a little bit about the science behind  why our eye can be tricked into believing that a bunch  of still images back to back actually look like motion.