France, Part 1 | Charles - Emile Reynaud

This is what i already know about animation in France.......nothing (of what i can think of). So hopefully i can learn something.
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This blog is one of the first things i found (CLICK) which told me about Emile. He was the inventor of the 'Praxinoscope' and made one of the first animations to watch on it.
So, the Praxinoscope, it came after the Zoetrope and it used mirrors and man power to use it, then

'further development was the Projection Praxinoscope which used a series of transparent pictures on glass; an oil lamp illuminated the images and the mirror reflections passed through a lens onto a screen.'

He showed his animation called 'Pauvre Pierrot' (Video below) on the Praxinoscope in France to crowds of people, Jules Cheret, a famouse poster designer doing work for the 'moulan rouge', made posters for Reynaud to publicize this animation. So a lot of work went into 'Pauvre Pierrot' and it was shown in Paris. Link to Reference

Jules Cheret Poster for Pauvre Pierrot

Now loads of people say about different animations "THIS IS THE FIRST ANIMATION...EVER!!!!, EVERY ONE WATCH IT BECAUSE ITS REALLY HISTORIC AND OLD AND INTERESTING TO WATCH BECAUSE ITS SO OLD!!!! PLUS ITS REALLY OLD!!!!", So i don't know weather to believe what people say or not, I've checked a few websites to see if it was the first ever animation or one of the first. On IMDB someone reviews the animation and says its 'one of the first'. This site has an extract from a book called 'film history' and the title of this extract is 'Emile Reynaud - First motion picture cartoonist'. So i guess we will never know the first moving image. :'(



Its kind of a nice animation, for the time (1892) its awesome, I like the backgrounds, not keen on the characters, they do nothing for me. But the music is really nice, it takes me back to when i used to play Zelda on the game boy (the gray brick one!). The music makes it worth watching for me, and I end up thinking of the game boy rather than watching the animation.
The movements are mostly wooden, i liked the climb over the wall bit because planning to not draw bits which will be behind the wall is hard and takes planning (this also occurs when the lady walks in from the door to the right)

Also noticed (remember this was 1892) that the start of the animation, which the still image of a guy next to a projector, sets the scene. When we were looking for good editing things from watching that 'cutting edge' documentary, this would be a early example of cutting/ fading from one scene to another.....i think.