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J. Stuart Blackton

J. Stuart Blackton was a cartoonist and in 1906, he created the first film to ever use animation called "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" which was a live action and stop motion film.

Blackton would use the technique of lightning sketches where he would rapidly draw as the film goes on

He was one of the first to use stop motion as he used a stop-camera trick where the next shot would have a different drawing,

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Emile Cohl

Emile Cohl was considered one of the fathers of animation, he created the first fully animated film with no live action in 1908 with the film Fantasmagorie.

Fantasmagorie was one of the first films to use traditional animation, Emile Cohl would hand draw stick figures and he placed each drawing on an illuminated glass plate to trace the next frame.

APA referencing: Leskosky, Richard J. (April 26 2018). Cohl, Emile (1857-1938). Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism.

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Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay is the creator of the film "Gertie the Dinosaur", the first film to use key frames, inbetweening and animation loops which would be used in almost every animated film and projects.

Gertie the Dinosaur was the first animated character that the audience fell in love with.

Winsor McCay's flim would later influence other animators such as the Fleischer Brothers and Walt Disney

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Max Fleischer

Max Fleischer is one of the Fleischer Brothers and invented the rotoscope in 1915 which is a process of creating animation by tracing over live-action footage which saved a lot of time

rotoscope technique was used by countless films like Snow white and Alice in wonderland

Max Fleischer animated the famous Popeye's series

Max Fleischer is the creator Betty Boop, on her first appearance she was a humanoid dog with floppy ears

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Tony Sarg

Tony Sarg was a puppeteer and was described as "Americas Puppet Master"

Tony made the animation called "The First Circus" in 1921, the film didn't use drawings but was made with the silhouette of his puppets filmed using frame by frame.

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Walt Disney

Walter Elias Disney is a pioneer of animation cartoon films and created the "Steam Boat Willy" in 1928.

Steam Boat Willy was a landmark in history of animation because it was the first animation to use sound and music that synchronised with the cartoon.

Many agree that the golden age of animation started after the release of Steam Boat Willy.

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Walt Disney and Herbert Kalmus

Walt Disney and Herbert Kalmus created an animated short called "Flowers and Trees - Silly Symphony" in 1932.

The short was so great that people started to recognise animation as an art work and created the Academy Awards for Best Animated Shorts which the film won.

Flowers and Trees was fully coloured and Walt did this by shooting in a Technicolour Camera which captures separate colour records onto three strips of film.

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Walt Disney

Walt Disney would release the first fully animated movie called "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" in 1937.

Many believed that the film would be very unsuccessful since a fully animated movie has never been done before, little did they know that the film had the box office of $418 million with only the budget of $1.49 million.

Walt used cel animation where the animators would draw and flip pages back and forth to see the movement, like a flip book. Once the drawings were down, it would be traced with ink and onto transparent sheets and put over a background.

The movie would be the start of Disney's golden age

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In 1940, Disney released their film Pinocchio, their second film produced during the Disney Golden age. The film, based on a novel of the same name by Carlo Collodi, follows the tale about of a puppet being brought to life, and was also the first film portraying a ‘Disney Death’ in which a character is seemingly killed before later being revived or shown to never have died.

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Fantasia was Disney’s third film from their golden age. It was the first film ever created with stereophonic sound, which is a process involving overlapping audio tracks from different microphones to create a 3-Dimensional sound (i.e: hearing slightly different things in either ear).

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Tie Shan Gong Zhu (Princess Iron Fan) was released in 1941 and was China’s first ever feature length animated film (and thus was also the first one produced in all of Asia). The film, based on popular Chinese folktale “Journey to the West” follows three travellers trying to pass through a fiery mountain, seeking the magical fan of a princess who does not wish to part with it.

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Japan’s First animated feature film “Momotaro: Sacred Sailors” was released. The film, used as propaganda for the second world war, used the well-known folk hero “Momotaro” to show how the Japanese military had achieved such decisive victories in the South Pacific.

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Britain also released their first animated feature film this year; “Handling Ships”. Created as an instructional video for the British admiralty, it uses stop-motion animation to provide training assistants to the new navigators of the Royal Navy.

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In 1954, George Orwell’s novel ‘Animal Farm’ was adapted into an animated feature film of the same name. This film, while it was Britain’s second feature-length animated production, was the first to receive a theatrical release and be shown to an audience for entertainment. While the film features Disney-esque animation, it is a direct retelling of the novel, in which animals start a revolution on a farm and take it over so that all animals can be treated as equal, although some are more equal than others.

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Disney released its film ‘Lady and the Tramp’, following the romantic tale of a sheltered uptown Cocker Spaniel dog and a streetwise downtown Mutt. It was also the first animated feature film featuring CinemaScope, an anamorphic process that uses a widescreen lens and projector system. During filming and animation, the frames/ cells are compressed to fit into a 35mm film, which when projected using a certain lens adaption, will be uncompressed to show the image at its intended width.

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In 1957, former Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) studio animation directors William Hannah and Joseph Barbera founded Hannah-Barbera Productions (responsible for classic cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Yogi Bear).

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The first coloured anime feature film “Hakujaden (The white snake enchantress) was released by Toei Animation. The film follows the adventures of a cute little panda, a dragon god and evil serpent.

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In 1958, the first computer generated animation ever released in film was during the opening sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo.

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Disney Released “Sleeping Beauty”, which follows the tale of Princess Aurora, who was cursed into a 100 year slumber, only to be saved by a prince who goes on to defeat the evil queen who cursed her. It was also the last Disney film to feature the use of hand-inked cels, a traditional animation technique where each frame of the animation was hand-drawn and painted on transparent sheets (celluloids). On top of this, Sleeping Beauty was the first Disney film to be filmed in 70mm wide-screen Technirama, where the film of the movie was run horizontally through a projector, instead of vertically, thus creating a higher resolution film frame.

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India released their first ever coloured animated feature film ‘The Banyan Deer”. Films Division India, with the help of Disney Animator Clair Weeks, created the film based on a popular tale from the Buddhist Jatakas, about a golden deer who stops his mother from being sacrificed to a king and subsequently impresses the king with his compassion.

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1964: In 1964, Hannah-Barbera Studios released “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear”, their first theatrical feature film, and the first ever animated movie based off a T.V Program.

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Disney released "The Jungle Book” the last film that was ever personally supervised by Walt Disney.

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The Apteryx and the Easter Bunny was the first ever colour 2D computer animated short.

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Metadata was released by Peter Folds , and was the first  2D animated short to feature the use of computer-assisted animation through the use of a key-frame program. The film is about the universal desire to escape the demands of life.

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Fritz the Cat, created by Ralph Bakshi became the first ever animated feature to receive the X-rating (meaning it was for adults only). It also became the highest grossing independent animated film of its time.

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The first use of 2D computer animation in a feature film as used in Westworld. During scenes shot from the point of view of Yul Brynner’s gunslinger, they used raster graphics.

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Futureworld, the sequel to WestWorld was the first feature film to use 3D hidden line removal, which was done when depicting an architectural street scene.

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Tron

Early demonstrations fo 3D animation in films

A lot of vector lines and animation used

Steven Lisberger the director set up an animation studio specifically for the production of the film

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Akira

One of the major Japanese films to gain international recognition

Gave Japan a reputation for producing gritty, intelligent films and put them on the international movie map

Most expensive anime film of the time with a budget of $5.5 million

Inspired blockbuster Hollywood films like the Matrix and Star Wars

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Nightmare Before Christmas

Conceptualised in a poem by Burton while he was working at Disney

Revolutionised stop motion animation

Created a very distinct style and aesthetic that we see replicated in many other films since its release e.g. coraline, box trolls, monster house

Was originally written to be a 30 minute tv short

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Toy Story

Kickstarting a beloved franchise

A big step forward in the realm of 3d animation and mainstream media

Introduces Computer Animation Production System or CAPS into the mainstream for making fully 3D films. Before this film, Disney only used it for making 3D backgrounds for their 2D animated films.

The first Disney Pixar film to be released

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Ghost in the Shell

Used a process called digitally generated animation (DGA). This is a combination of cal animation, computer graphics and audio which is entered as digital data. Allowed traditional animation to be combined with digital media for a more streamlined process. This was once thought to be the ‘future’ of animation.

Iconic story-telling

Brought back the cyberpunk/futuristic aesthetic after it slowly died out in the 70s and 80s

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Shrek

Originally set up to be a live action movie with CGI elements, but when it was turned down it got sent over to Pacific Data Images who used a combination of their in-house software and MAYA.

The original voice actor for Shrek died during production and the new VA Mike Myers insisted that the script be entirely re-written for him.

Another iconic franchise

Popularised musicals for a more mainstream audience

Combines cultural influences of the early 2000s and a crude humour that wasn’t seen in kids films up until that point

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Avatar

Used a combination of live-action sets and real-world environments and motion capture to make the Avatar universe.

All the actors were completely motion capped and then CGI was used to add even more effects on top.

Reinvented CGI

So revolutionary for the time

The animation still holds up against some of the biggest budget CGI films 10+ years later

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Frozen

Originally made to be in 2D, Disney changed the production to stereoscopic 3D after the success of Tangled.

In the end, they made a 3D film that also incorporated 2D animation to create a more fantastical style. This heavily contrasted with the hyper-realistic background gives the film its grandeur.

Took over the world

Probably one of the most iconic children’s franchises in the last three decades

Experimented with new 3d animation techniques to make the frozen environment and the snow a possibility

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Inside Out

Director Peter Docter told the animators to push the caricature of each of the emotion characters to the extreme to avoid creating unoriginal and stiff characters.

They spent 3 years enhancing the dinnertime scene with draw-overs and edits to get the emotions perfect.

Showed the importance of solid character design

Stood out in the current market for its simplicity and showed that flashy isn’t always the best when compared to raw fundamental animation and story-telling