MelodySmithAnimation:history

Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904, French)

Marey, a French scientist studied animal motion and in 1873 published a book (La Machine Animale), in which he proposed the unsupported transit theory. This was that at a point in a horse's gallop, all of the animal's hooves leave the ground at the same time. An English photographer (Muybridge) went on to support his theory by providing photographic evidence.

Like Muybridge, Marey went on to take sequential photos of many other moving animals, inventing a device (chronophotographic gun, 1882) which took 12 consecutive photographs in a second and exposed them onto the same photographic plate. Up until that point it was usual to expose one image onto one plate.

An example of Marey's photographic images on one photographic plate.

Together with Muybridge's contribution, Marey's work has provided the basic studies of movement required by animators to reproduce 'walk cycles' required for the movement of their characters to appear natural and realistic.