World's oldest animation found?

[robcat2075]

French researcher has made some animation from cave drawings but not really explained how this effect would have been done in the actual cave...

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/world...-204120011.html

[markw]

Hummmm... Interesting idea but I would like to see done for real in-situe

[Gerry]

I generally assume that these cave dwellers were at least as smart and imaginative as we are, maybe more. It's very probable that just having "sequential" images drawn on top of one another would have been enough to imagine the movement all by themselves. This may have been an intuitive leap for them that everyone "got" once they saw it.

 

In any event, it was their version of "moving pictures" and no doubt had an air of reality in the hands of a good artist! The anatomical accuracy and artistic flair of these cave drawings still astounds me.

[Wildsided]

Or maybe they just moved their heads up and down really fast

[robcat2075]

The anatomical accuracy and artistic flair of these cave drawings still astounds me.

 

In Don Graham's book "Composing Pictures" he discusses a technique he calls "passage" where different spatial planes of an image are none-the-less connected by a common color. It's counter-intuitive to a novice artist but it's effective when done right and one of the historical examples he shows of it, aside from modern paintings of the last 150 years, is a 35,000 year old cave painting showing this exact technique in use and expertly done.

[NancyGormezano]

Hummmm... Interesting idea but I would like to see done for real in-situe

 

 

Mark, I see you are living in Spain. Just recently the cave paintings at "el Castillo" have been declared the oldest cave paintings discovered.

 

I have been there (2006?) and as well as to Altimira. Wonderful! Unfortunately, the ones at Altimira are reproductions. They do not let any visitors, other than researchers near the originals as they were deteriorating from exposure.

 

I believe we could see the originals in El Castillo.

 

Here's a better, newer article on El Castillo, describing the process of dating the cave.

Edited June 14, 2012 by NancyGormezano

[fae_alba]

Or maybe they just moved their heads up and down really fast

 

sounds like a Mel Brooks scene...

[robcat2075]

I wonder if these painters were like "stars". Did other cave men look at what they painted and go "damn, that is so cool, i wish i could draw like that!"

[markw]

Hummmm... Interesting idea but I would like to see done for real in-situe

 

 

Mark, I see you are living in Spain. Just recently the cave paintings at "el Castillo" have been declared the oldest cave paintings discovered.

 

I have been there (2006?) and as well as to Altimira. Wonderful! Unfortunately, the ones at Altimira are reproductions. They do not let any visitors, other than researchers near the originals as they were deteriorating from exposure.

Yes indeed I am in Spain Nancy, way down South!

Funny that you have seen them, yet live on the other side of the Atlantic. And I'm at least in the same country as them but have still not managed to get up there to see them yet Hopefully one day though.

 

I generally assume that these cave dwellers were at least as smart and imaginative as we are, maybe more. It's very probable that just having "sequential" images drawn on top of one another would have been enough to imagine the movement all by themselves. This may have been an intuitive leap for them that everyone "got" once they saw it.

I agree with you Gerry. Another good example of this, all be it much more "modern", is the the Bayeux Tapestry and the scenes depicting the French cavalry.

You get a standing horse first and then 9 or 10 horses later its shown at a full gallop.

I'm not aware of any one suggesting that the viewer of the tapestry was meant to run past it to get the effect to work!

[detbear]

I think that people should consider the possibility that many of the cave paintings could have been done by Cave "kids". Seems to me that anthropologists miss much of the staggering value of that possibility while using them to show how "smart" and artistic they were. I tend to think they were both better artists and new the stars way better than we do. They didn't have other things to block their view and take up their time. Drawing/ painting was more than likely Cave dweller 101.

 

[NancyGormezano]

Or maybe they just moved their heads up and down really fast

 

Or maybe they noticed that moving the flickering light from their hand held torch in a dark cave (as they worked) produced a film projector/stroboscopic effect?

 

I wonder if these painters were like "stars". Did other cave men look at what they painted and go "damn, that is so cool, i wish i could draw like that!"

 

I am sure there must have been stars. In traditional cultures today (eg like Asmat carvers in Irian Jaya, and other tribes), it is obvious that some excel more than others at hand/eye coordination, just like in hunting and other skills. What's also interesting is that people from outside the culture, as well as the Asmat people themselves, agree and recognize the work of those who are more skilled.

 

I wonder who/how was the first to discover that one could externalize the internal world & experiences on a surface, as an image, in order to communicate, instead of verbalize via grunts or to augment verbalization? That must have been a leap forward in human development. Some cultures/languages have never leaped to "writing"

[robcat2075]

A studio animator's thoughts on cave paintings...

 

http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/201...s-in-caves.html