Lightning Sketch Artists, Part 3

Lightning Sketch Artists, Part 3 - We were having a look on the Victorian living form of entertainment called the act lightning sketches. So far we have seen the work of J. Stuart Blackton and Winsor McCay, two of the most famous American practitioners.


Another towers Blackton that Edison hired to film was "The Enchanted Drawing" (video link) where Blackton draws a man with a top hat and a bottle and a glass of wine. By stopping the camera and exchange them against real objects, he turned the sketch flash performance in a magical act to avert.


The French filmmaker Georges Méliès (1861-1938) was using the camera right thing stopped at the same time. In The Magic Book, drawings in a book become giant costumed characters.

Méliès also recorded on film its Adolphe Thiers caricatures, Chamberlain, Queen Victoria, and Bismark, and most likely these early films were what inspired Blackton

A good source on this subject is the book :. Before Mickey: animated film, 1898-1928

Previously on GurneyJourney:

Lightning Sketch artists, Part 1

Lightning Sketch artists, Part 2