The Very First Known ANIMATION - Émile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie (1908)

I love knowing pieces of entertainment industry history and this is a special one.

French caricaturist, cartoonist and animator Émile Cohl, created the first known animated film, Fantasmagorie.

Available in the public domain here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/emile-cohls-fantasmagorie-1908/

One of the earliest examples of hand-drawn animation is Fantasmagorie and widely considered the very first animated cartoon.

The animation may look like it was created on a blackboard, but it’s not. It’s written on paper. The blackboard effect was achieved by shooting each of the 700 drawings onto negative film.

The title is a reference to the “fantasmograph”, a mid-19th century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images on to surrounding walls.

I hope you enjoy this bit of entertainment history.