Emile Cohl created 2 minutes long animation called Fantasmagorie (1908), which impact the animation world hugely. Fantasmagorie is considered to be the first 2D animation; some earlier films also included stop-motion animation, but Cohl first produced a fully animated film. The animation begins with both stop-motion and live action. Throughout the animation, the main character encounters various morphing objects such as a bottle that transforms into a flower. The definition of the word fantamagorie, phantasmagoria in English, is “a constantly shifting complex succession of things seen or imagined.” When I first watched the video without any information, I felt a sense of tension and rapidness. After knowing that the title means phantasmagoria , I think the rapid shift of images and shapes truly deliver the feeling of the title “Fantamagorie”. Despite the blackboard look appearance, the animation was not drawn on blackboard but rather on paper with charcoal. The blackboard look was created by shooting each seven hundred drawings onto negative film.

Emile Cohl was also an important part of the French art movement called, “Les Arts Incohérents”, foreshadowed the surrealist and other art movements in the 20th century. Les Arts Incohérents, or Incoherent Movement, was founded by Jules Lévy in 1880s and has a characteristic such as irrational and absurd. Cohl began making films in 1908 and created more than 200 movies in his lifetime. As watching Fantasmagorie, the rapid morphing and transition of shapes as squash and stretch was really impressive.