100 years ago today the first known fully animated cartoon was shown. It was a short called “Fantasmagorie” by French artist Emile Cohl. He created it by tracing over 700 drawings on an illuminated glass plate. By comparison, the anime masterpiece “Akira” was created using 160,000 animation cels.

So the next time you are watching Cartoon Network or the see an announcement about the next big Pixar flick, remember Mr. Cohl.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 1:58 pm and is filed under Memphis Overnight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.