The 1910's are characterized by a string of moving comic strips produced by the newspapers to be invoked in the news reels, and few really talented animators.

The big newspapers in New York needed to expand their business into moving images. Thus the newsreels appeared in theatres. You paid a dime and could watch the programme for as long as you liked. And it needed the comic strips transferred to animation as part of the programme.
Quite a few animation studios were established to serve this need.

The first studio in New York was Raol Barré, who came from Canada, in 1913.

 

 

 

It's easy to see that animation had not yet become an art form of it's own. That would take another 15 years.

In this example by Charles Bowers we can see trends of this visual language among very stiff movements. 55 seconds into the film squash and stretch appears!

 

 

 

The cartoon animation was made on paper with ink and thereby it was limited to strict black and white. In 1914 Bray studios and Earl Hurd introduced and patented cel animation. This was a huge technical leap forward and was used for the rest of the century in cartoon animation. This meant full grey scale images, separation of characters and complicated backgrounds. As in this Bobby Bump film...

 

 

 

As for the individual artists who showed real talent for motion there were a few in the 1910's. Emile Cohl was continuously very productive throughout the decade and very personal. He tried many different styles and techniques as in this film from 1912....

 

 

Wladyslaw Starewicz was born in Poland, moved to Moscow and worked in Lithuania. At the Museum of Natural History he was to make a film about nocturnal beetles and the only way to do it was by animation (inspired by Emile Cohl). He stayed in the field och animated bugs for some time. This is the Cameraman's Revenge (excerpt) 1912...

 
Starewich fled to France in 1917 where he stayed and worked with animation for the rest of his life.

Here in Sweden we had Viktor Bergdahl who started working with animation in 1915(inspired by Winsor McCay). He was self taught with great talent. His 15 films in the Captain Grogg serious were appreciated in Sweden and abroad.

 

 

 

The most interesting animator of the decade was Winsor McCay. A Canadian illustrator and comic strip creator of Little Nemo in Slumberland among others. He made his first film with these characters in 1911...

 

McCay was extremely well gifted for cartoon animation. He had a three dimensional feeling and he could turn things around with ease, he could describe volumes with lines and he had a good sense of timing. This can be seen in the 1914 Gertie The Dinosaur...

 

His masterpiece was The Sinking of the Lusitania. It was the first time he used cel technique. This frightening story is convincingly made and the illusion is complete.

By the end of the decade animation was slowly shaping up and would soon turn into an art form...