France Part 2 | Émile Cohl

Still reading off this guys Blog (CLICK) , Émile Cohl is another person (animator) who was around at the same time as Emile Reynaud, but one of Cohl's first animations was in 1908 which was quite a few years after Reynaud's. But he is considered the first animator, and reading an extract from this book CLICK Page 59. he seemed a very desperate man, and called him self 'the first animator' so i guess Reynaud had no say in the matter.

He worked for a company called 'Gaumont Film' where he was a writer, he then in went on to be a director there, he was there till 1910.
Gaumont Film is said to be one of the first film companies, founded by Leon Gaumont. What I've noticed so far is that things started in France, weather it was also going on in different countries or not, i don't know, but the things we see today might not have been if it wasn't for these people and companies doing what they did in the 1800's and early 1900's.

During Emile's time at this company he made this film called 'Fantasmagorie' made in 1908, its considered the first fully animated film, this is now a matter of what you want to believe or what people want us to believe.



I like this animation, its a lot more fluent? (think that's the work i'm looking for? :S)....its much smoother (thats sounds better :) and it also shows off some of the animation principals better than Reynaud's did.
Watching from 17 seconds till, like, 21 seconds, the man (made up of just circles) dose this amazing 'Poing' thing, the lady with a silly hat leans back and as she leans, the circular man squashes and 'poings' back into place. I though that bit stud out as being good animation.

Also he has this style of morphing anything he makes into different things, to me its something you do if your experimenting, you know, you run out of ideas or get board of animating it, so you change it into something else!
But it works for him (not saying that's what he was doing, he might have planned it all!) , there's a bit where he turns an elephant into a House! who dose that? but it looked cool though.


Cohl made over 200 animations, and in the book on goolge, page 61, it explains that Cohl found a quicker way of animating. He drew only 8 frames (per second) then photograph each one twice, this works (i've done it!) so this made his animations faster to make, thus why he had over 200 animations on his CV!