Animation means things which are lifeless come alive and move.
Since earliest times, people have always been astonished by movement．But not until this century have we managed to take control of movement, to record it, and in the case of animation, to retranslate it and recreate it．To do all this, we use a movie camera and a projector (放映机).
In the world of cartoon animation, nothing is impossible．You can make the characters do exactly what you want them to do.
A famous early cartoon character was Felix the Cat, created by Pat Sullivan in America in the early nine twenties．Felix was a wonderful cat．He could do all sorts of things no natural cat could do like taking off his tail, using it as a handle and then putting it back.
Most of the great early animators lived and worked in America, the home of the moving picture industry．The famous Walt Disney cartoon characters came to life after 1928．Popeye the Sailor and his girl friend Olive Oyo were born at Max Ficischer in 1933.
But to be an animator, you don't have to be a professional(专业人士)．It is possible for anyone to make a animated film without using a camera at all．All you have to do is to draw directly onto an empty film and then run the film through a projector.
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