Stop Motion Animation Past and Present

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The earliest form of stop motion animation was a zoetrope. A Zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. The earliest Zoetrope was designed in China 180 AD, by inventor Ding Human. It is a cylinder that spins as the user look through the slits as the pictures pass by. The splits simply allow the pictures to restrain from blurring ensuring that the images do not blur together therefore the images appear to be seen in rapid succession of one another producing an illusion that the images are moving creating a motion picture or the equivalent off.
 It was one of the first forms of imagery all zoetrope worked on the same principles, the images were drawn on a strip which were set around the bottom 3rd of a metal drum, with the slits now cut in the upper section of the drum. The drum was then mounted on a spindle so that it could be spun manually. The faster the drum was spun the smoother the images were portrayed. Zoetrope cycles were at the time revolutionary they were often only made up of about 12-14 images.
It was one of the first forms of imagery entertainment and was aimed at everybody including adults and children who were fascinated by the design and image the zoetrope portray as though images were coming to life although the zoetrope would not be seen today as entertainment or a major breakthrough due to the advance in technology I believe back then it would have been an exciting new invention that could potentially encourage new ideas and allow others to make their own zoetrope as hobbies and source of entertainment, decorating the zoetrope and experimenting with different images and colours. The only weakness with the zoetrope was the fact that it was all made manually and had to be manually spun in order to work therefore it was limited as to how far you could extend the entertainment beyond a basic level was obviously not very portable due to its size