World's First Animated FilmBy Cartoonist Rob Thomas

If you've never heard of Emile Cohl before, you're in for a real treat.

Emile Cohl (1857-1938) was a French caricaturist, cartoonist, toy inventor and animator best known for creating the first fully animated film, fantasmagorie (1908).

A very entertaining, short film devised in a 'stream of consciousness' style, fantasmagorie was composed of 700 stick-figure drawings, each of which was double-exposed, and has a running time of nearly two minutes. Filmed with black lines on white paper, Cohl later reversed the negative in order to achieve the effect of white chalk on a blackboard.


The making of 'Fantasmagorie' was an arduous process, during which Cohl placed a drawing on a lightbox, photographed it, then traced it on the the next sheet with slight changes, and repeated the process until finished.

By the way, the title refers to the 'fantasmograph', which was a mid-nineteenth century lantern which projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.