Schwechater, Peter Kubelka, 1958

Some might argue that this barely qualifies as animation. But they can argue with somebody else, because a)the abstraction, the stylization of the images, and the short length of the clips give it the appearance of animation, b) THIS IS MY BLOG AND I SAY IT GOES HERE, and c) It's amazing.

In 1957, Peter Kubelka was hired to make a short commercial for Scwechater beer. The beer company undoubtedly thought they were commissioning a film that would help them sell their beers; Kubelka had other ideas. He shot his film with a camera that did not even have a viewer, simply pointing it in the general direction of the action. He then took many months to edit his footage, while the company fumed and demanded a finished product. Finally he submitted a film, 90 seconds long, that featured extremely rapid cutting (cutting at the limits of most viewers' perception) between images washed out almost to the point of abstraction — in black-and-white positive and negative and with red tint — of dimly visible people drinking beer and of the froth of beer seen in a fully abstract pattern. Via