History of animation
Before the studio stopped in 1918, it had employed some new talents, including Vernon Stallings, Ben Sharpsteen, Jack King, John Foster, Grim Natwick, Burt Gillett and Isadore Klein.
In the early 1920s, the absolute film movement with artists such as Walter Ruttmann, Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger made short abstract animations which proved influential.
With his short-lived own company Laugh-O-Gram Films, Inc., Disney, together with Iwerks, Fred's brother Hugh Harman, Rudolph Ising and Carman Maxwell produced a series of circa seven-minute modernized fairy tale cartoons, inspired by Terry's Aesop's Fables.
[32] The studio went bankrupt in 1923, but had already made the unsold 12-minute film Alice's Wonderland, featuring a live-action girl (Virginia Davis) interacting with numerous cartoon characters, including the Felix-inspired Julius the Cat (who had already appeared in the Laugh-O-Gram fairy tales without a name).
Lotte Reiniger had already designed a type of multiplane camera for Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed[35] and her collaborator Berthold Bartosch used a similar setup for his intricately detailed 25-minute film L'Idée (1932).
Disney's next feature Bambi (1942) returned to a larger budget and a lavish style, but the more dramatic story, darker mood, and lack of fantasy elements were not well-received during its initial run and the movie lost money at the box office.
Disney continued their cartoon successes, adding Daisy Duck (1937/1940) and Chip 'n' Dale (1943/1947) to the Mickey Mouse universe, while Warner Bros. developed new characters to join their popular Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes cast, including Tweety, Henery Hawk (both in 1942), Pepé Le Pew, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam (all in 1945), Foghorn Leghorn, Barnyard Dawg, Gossamer (all in 1946), Marvin the Martian (1948), and Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner (1949).
Movies for Small Fry (1947), presented by "big brother" Bob Emery on Tuesday evenings on the New York WABD-TV channel, was one of the first TV series for children and featured many classic Van Beuren Studios cartoons.
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (the creators of Tom and Jerry) continued as Hanna-Barbera after Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer closed their animation studio in 1957 when MGM considered their back catalog sufficient for further sales.
Other notable programs include UPA's Gerald McBoing Boing (1956–1957), Soundac's Colonel Bleep (1957–1960, the first animated TV series in color), Terrytoons's Tom Terrific (1958), and Jay Ward's The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (1959–1964).
In contrast to the international film market (developed during the silent era when language problems were limited to title cards), TV-pioneering in most countries (often connected to radio broadcasting) focused on the domestic production of live programs.
Short cartoons were relatively expensive and could now be dropped from the program without people losing interest in the main feature, which became a sensible way to reduce costs when more and more potential movie-goers seemed to stay at home to watch movies on their television sets.
Within a few years, several anime TV series was made that would also receive varying levels of airplay in the United States and other countries, starting with the highly influential 鉄腕アトム (Astro Boy) (1963), followed by ジャングル大帝 (Kimba the White Lion) (1965–1966), エイトマン (8th Man) (1965), 魔法使いサリー (Sally the Witch) (1966–1967) and マッハGoGoGo (Mach GoGoGo a.k.a.
A notable exception was the pornographic short Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure (1928), presumably made by famous animators for a private party in honor of Winsor McCay, and not publicly screened until the late 1970s.
In animation, anti-war sentiments were present in several short underground films like Ward Kimball's Escalation (1968) (made independently from his employment at Disney) and the parody Mickey Mouse in Vietnam (1969).
The less political parody Bambi meets Godzilla (1969) by Marv Newland, another underground short film for adults, is considered a great classic and, based on a poll of 1,000 people working in the animation industry, was included in The 50 Greatest Cartoons.
Ralph Bakshi thought that the idea of "grown men sitting in cubicles drawing butterflies floating over a field of flowers, while American planes are dropping bombs in Vietnam and kids are marching in the streets, is ludicrous.
His next projects Hey Good Lookin' (finished in 1975, but shelved by Warner Bros. until release in an adjusted version in 1982) and Coonskin (1975, suffered from protests against its perceived racism while satirizing it) were far less successful, but received more appreciation later on and became cult films.
For The Lord of the Rings it became a means to create a look that Bakshi described as "real illustration as opposed to cartoons" for a film that he wanted to be true to Tolkien's work, with reference material shot with costumed actors in Spain.
The imaginative French/Czech science fiction production La Planète sauvage (1973) was awarded the Grand Prix special jury prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival,[55] and in 2016, it was ranked the 36th-greatest animated movie ever by Rolling Stone.
Resulting productions of these arrangements include Barbapapa (The Netherlands/Japan/France 1973–1977), Wickie und die to starken Männer/小さなバイキング ビッケ (Vicky the Viking) (Austria/Germany/Japan 1974), Il était une fois... (Once Upon a Time...) (France/Japan 1978) and Doctor Snuggles (The Netherlands/West Germany/Japan/US 1979).
Other cartoons were based on superhero comics, TV personalities (Garry Coleman, Chuck Norris, Mr. T), other live-action shows (Alf, Punky Brewster) adult action or science fiction movies (Robocop, Rambo, Ghostbusters, Teen Wolf), video games (Pac-Man, Pole Position, Captain N), or children's literature (The Littles, Berenstain Bears).
Hayao Miyazaki's epic theatrical features Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984), based on his manga, and 天空の城ラピュタ (Castle in the Sky) (1986) are regularly praised as some of the greatest animated films of all time.
Studio Ghibli continued its success with Takahata's WWII film 火垂るの墓 (Grave of the Fireflies) (1988) and Miyazaki's iconic となりのトトロ (My Neighbor Totoro) (1988) and 魔女の宅急便 (Kiki's Delivery Service) (1989).
The fully animated Roger Rabbit short film Tummy Trouble (1989) was then packaged with the live-action family comedy Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and believed to have helped that movie's quick start at the box-office.
The dark rock opera film Pink Floyd – The Wall (1982) contained 15 minutes worth of animated segments by British cartoonist Gerald Scarfe, who had already designed related artwork for the 1979 album and 1980-81 concert tour.
Pong (1972) by Atari, Inc., with very simple two-dimensional black-and-white graphics, and Taito's Space Invaders became huge successes that paved the way for a medium that can be regarded as an interactive branch of computer animation.
The most successful imported cartoon to the channel is PAW Patrol (2013–present), from another Canadian network Spin Master, which is on Nickeoldeon's sub-channel Nick Jr., where programs on that station are aimed at toddlers rather than children or teenagers.
Studio Ghibli continued its enormous success with Miyazaki's Spirited Away (2001), ハウルの動く城 (Howl's Moving Castle) (2004), 崖の上のポニョ (Ponyo) (2008) and 風立ちぬ (The Wind Rises) (2013) and Hiromasa Yonebayashi借りぐらしのアリエッティ(The Secret World of Arrietty) (2010), all grossing more than $100 million worldwide and appearing in the top 20 of the highest-grossing anime films of all time (as of 2024).
Examples of CN cartoons of the 21st century are Samurai Jack (2001–2004, 2017), Codename: Kids Next Door (2002–2008), Teen Titans (2003–2006), Ben 10 (2005–2008), Adventure Time (2010–2018), the Regular Show (2010–2017) and The Amazing World of Gumball (2011–2019).
