J. Stuart Blackton (Pioneer)

 

James Stuart Blackton was born on January 5^th, 1875 in Sheffield, England and died on August 13^th, 1941 in Los Angeles, California. J. Stuart Blackton was an Anglo-American film producer and director of the silent era. The silent era is when there was no sound for films and clips, so they would mostly use mimes for films. J. Stuart Blackton was also seen as a pioneer of motion pictures, he founded Vitagraph Studios in 1807. Vitagraph Studios was a US motion picture studio and by 1907 it was the most productive company. Blackton was the first to make films that consisted of stop motion and drawn animation, this allowed him to take upon the name ‘The Father of American Animation’.

In 1906 Blackton released a short silent animated cartoon ‘Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’. This is seen to be the first animated film recorded on standard picture film. This would be another reason why people saw Blackton as a pioneer for animation.

In the scene above it shows a male and female, which are animated hand drawn scenes that appear on a chalkboard. In this scene the man starts to stare at the women and then he starts to smoke a cigar and the smoke fills the whole chalkboard, after this is created Blackton rubs out the board and starts a new short story. In the beginning, Blackton decided to show his hands when he started to draw the man but for the women the drawings just appeared. The images are then moved by themselves which aided by stop motion.

Blackton left Vitagraph Studios in 1917. In 1921 he came to England, where he directed three lavish costume dramas in Prismacolor (brand of professional artist). ‘The Glorious Adventure’ (1922) and ‘The Virgin Queen’ (1923)

However, though, Blackton was seen as the ‘Father of American Animation’ the Warner Bros took over Vitagraph studious in 1926. He then retired but in 1929 there was a crash which led to him losing all his money, this forced him back to work. Blackton ended his days working for the Anglo American film company. He was then killed in a car accident.

In my opinion I would say that the pioneer James Stuart Blackton played the most important role in animation. The reason why I think that Blackton played the most important role is because if he didn’t start working on animation, then the people who were inspired by his work and carried it on would have not had the determination to enter the animation world. The people that were inspired by Blackton’s work were Emile Cohl which then inspired Winsor Mcay and then led to a man called Goldwin. This can be seen as the domino effect, so the reason why Blackton was most important is because he can be seen as the first domino creating a reaction. If he didn’t starts producing then the others may have not followed.