mad scientist

there is the whole frankenstein thing associated with animation. it is what every cave painter wanted, isn't it, to see that color on the rock turn into movement, turn into the thing that the image tried to capture. in classical art, in the art of the rennaisance, the drawing, the painting, representing in a money way the thing that was drawn, but what if that drawing itself assumed a kind of life. movement isn't life, but it is one closer illusion to life. movement brings with it so many other emotions.
the first animators were really lightning sketch artists. lightning sketch artists were vaudeville performers who drew fast, chalk on blackboard, dark charcoal on light paper. there was a whole act around it, to be sure, a performance that made it more than just watching somebody draw, but it was drawing. a sketch artist performed in front of the movie camera, and if you stop the camera and add to the drawing, and then shoot again, the drawing starts to change without the presence of the drawer, or at least it seems so. and then it was so more amazing than just fast. something that thousands of years were waiting for.
that's a kind of big magic that all those cave painters with their fires might have wanted, might have imagined, might have seen themselves in the flicker of the light as they moved left to right or right to left. they might have seen that bison move a little along the background of rock wilderness. they could have seen some flickering movement, or drew extra legs as if that would add to it. and then the drawing was real, and then the drawing had a life of movement, if not of breath. who needs to breathe if you can move, who needs to talk if you can move your mouth and somebody else can talk.