Animation research

Listened to a radio interview with Jude Rogers who is only 13 but won an animation competition for his short animation Space to Imagine

Also, following a recent trip to see the play I looked at the animation for the backdrop in War Horse  made by Rae Smith Simple pencil drawings brought to life.

Having read the course notes I looked up Jan Svankmajer and a short clip of a very creepy version of Alice in Wonderland.
From the course notes I thought that cell animation was something like lego or stickle bricks so I looked up Cel Animation
La Jetée clip from the Guardian

Clever hand activated Illusions, I've seen books of these in cheap shops at Christmas, they're better than most of the rubbish you see sold alongside them.

Flipbooks on Colossal

None this is directed at answering the question "How has animation maintained this connection with the idea of the ‘illusion’?

All film is illusion, the movement of still images across a screen or the movement of a dot of light across a television. 

Animation is the illusion that anything can be made to move, have a personality and a life of its own. In real life living things move within their own capabilities so you won't see a flying elephant or a talking plant and anything else that moves is being driven from an external force, wind, explosion (the combustion engine) and is constrained by its weight and size. Using animation anything can be made to appear to move, Elephants can fly (Dumbo) and plants talk (Weed in the flowerpot men)
Animation is the opportunity to suspend reality, its a release from the rules of the universe.
Generally animations have characters that are unreal and when humans are used they are caricatures, The Simpsons, Manga characters with huge eyes, Disney princesses with impossibly small waists.
Recently, with the advent of CGI, the distinction between animation and reality has become blurred, Paddington appears in a film with real actors, but this is still using animation as a form of special effects.

Economics must have something to do with this, can you get the desired effect with real actors, stunt men and special effects or is it easier to have a team of animators making every move a special effect? If you're filming something like the life of Stephen Hawking its easier to employ an actor. If you want to create a specific atmosphere, maybe a simple world that is attractive to children, it may be easier to do this with animation.

Interestingly I read about the uncanny valley. Essentially we are so sensitive to how humans should move and behave that if we see something that looks realistically human that doesn't behave in a sufficiently believable way we are unsettled and reject that character.