Today in History: April 6; The first animated cartoon is released

Today in History: April 6.

In 1906, what most historians generally regard as the earliest surviving American animated film, in the strict sense of drawings simulating movement, is released.

Produced by the Vitagraph Company, the silent animated cartoon, titled "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces", has a running time of about 3 minutes.

It depicts the co-founder of Vitagraph Studios, J. Stuart Blackton, hand-drawing scenes on a chalkboard, in standard live action. From there, the stop-motion technique is used showing the completed drawings moving without the artist in the frame.

The flickering seen here was common in early animation, resulting from the failure to achieve consistent exposure in manual one-frame cranking. Stop-motion as well as cutout animation are used, however there is a section of the film where things are made to appear to move by altering the drawings themselves from frame to frame.

The film moves at 20 frames per second.