Talk:The Hand of the Artist

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Where's the animation?[edit]

This movie has often been called "the first British animation". I believe this is based on assumptions by someone reading an old description of the plot (a hand draws a couple and they become alive), without actually seeing the film (it was probably lost until the Corrick copy was first shown in 2008?). Many other people just repeated this assumption. There is also the reference in the 1979 article Animation iconography bij Donald Crafton about the recurrent motif of an artist's hand bringing a picture to life in many animations, which may have confused people enough to believe this film itself was animated (again without seeing it). However, there is about 3 minutes of video on youtube (of the supposedly 8 minute full duration of the film) that do show a hand with brush in high speed (undercranked camera?) revealing a photograph. The revealing is done with an unusual technique: it seems to involve a powder on thin transparent layer and a wet brush that dissolves the powder (note the wet creases). It does not seem to be the result of editing or stop-motion techniques. But this is just my own uncertain analysis and I haven't seen the full film. I can't find the full film, nor any sources with a proper analysis of the techniques used in the film, except Crafton in Before Mickey who concludes from reading the description in the 1906 catalog that the film uses stop-action (which is obviously the trick used when the couple comes to life and when they get crumpled up).Joortje1 (talk) 17:32, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ken Clark, citing the same source as you, would seem to concur[1], although Crafton with his use of the hedging phrases "probably" and "almost certainly" seems much less convinced. Mutt (talk) 21:55, 13 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]