Since animation was created it has never stopped advancing, this is most probably due to the fact that technology has increasingly got better at a much faster rate.
Believe it or not animation is thousands, if not millions of years old, sounds bizarre right? But in fact it's true, this is because way back in prehistoric times in the age of dinosaurs and cave men, the cave men used to make things called cave drawings, these cave drawing were their way of telling stories to the people around them. Most of the drawings would be of glorious battles and triumphs that the cave men had been involved in, when thought about, this doesn't differ much to the ideas of animations nowadays. It could be argued that these early cave drawings are the very foundation that todays concept of animation was built on.
Later on in time it could be said that the Egyptians murals in the burial chambers were also very early forms of animation, although there are multiple images of the men it still tells a story. The image shows what looks like two men wrestling, it could be telling a story of how the person who died, died or even what the persons interest was.
Another example of early forms of animation are seven drawings by Leonardo da Vinci extending over two folios in the Windsor Collection (Anatomical Studies of the Muscles of the Neck, Shoulder, Chest and Arm) show detailed drawings of the upper body, illustrating the changes as the torso turns from profile to frontal position and the forearm extends.
Even though all of these early examples may appear to be forms of animation, the lack of equipment and technological knowhow to show the images in motion, meaning that these image series are predecessors to animation and can't actually be called animation in the modern sense. They do however show the creators intensions and interest in showing images in motion.
In the early 19th century along came the Thaumatrope, this was arguably the very first form of true animation, the Thaumatrope was a disk with an image on each side, when twirled the two images superimpose on each other, therefore creating a two frame animation.
Shortly after came the Zoetrope, the Zoetrope was a series of sequential images in a revolving drum, when the drum was revolved the slits in the drum created the illusion of motion. This subsequently became one of the first movies, similarly film creates this illusion by having one image then black then another image then black once again. This was arguably the first form of multi-frame animation.
In 1895 technology for recording sequential images on a flexible film base was invented, this was achieved by the two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, this was huge at the time because this meant that animations could be viewed in more places, and if you were rich enough at the time to own such technology you could even watch them in the comfort of your home. Even though most of the films were undoubtably French, they were released in America, which i must imagine that very few people would have been able to view them due to knowing a second language was uncommon.
Cel and Paper animation was next and by the mid 1910s it dominated animation production in the US. Cell Animation was most appropriate to the assembly-line style of manufacturing because it took numerous people working on a very specific and simple repetitive duty. However, in Europe where assembly-line styles were less encourages, different types of animation like clay and other forms that required only a few individuals working on the set at a time was more popularised. This was because budgets were more limited due to smaller sets. This form of animation was also used by Disney in its early days.
Records were broken by Disney on the 18th November 1928, this was because they created the very first animation synchronised with sound, which was Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie. After failed efforts to record the soundtrack with bigger companies Disney then finally managed to seal a contract with bootleg Powers Cinephone process and in a session recorded the soundtrack with a 15-piece band and his very own Mickey squeaks.
Then just under 70 years later another massive progression was made in animation, Toy Story was released November 22, 1995. This was considered to be a first animated feature ever generated completely on computers. Disney and Pixar partnered up to create this film. It was also the very first animated film created virtually in 3D.
A significant factor in how most animation are created today was the development in CGI, this was first introduced with the film Dinosaur which was released in 2000, this introduced a next generation of computer graphics which gave animation more realistic characteristics. As small as it sounds the CGI was that good you could even define hairs on a lemur.
As you can tell from reading this article, animation didn't just appear overnight, it was developed over thousands if not millions of years dating right back to prehistoric times.
