As
American cinema has developed into the thriving industry it is today, the
aspect of animation has played a strong role in assisting different films to
reach new heights of success. Even
though animation is one of the most recent aspects to surface in film making, this
mode of production has skyrocketed over the past 25 years. According to “The Numbers,” a website
designed to track business information on movies, animation/live action, digital
animation, hand animation, and stop-motion animation make for four of the five
top-grossing movie production methods from 1995 to 2012. Animated movie’s total gross exceeded
that of every other production method with exception to live action (US Movie
Markey Summary, 2012).
Nevertheless, what is it that has brought animation from the black and
white soundless picture it once was in the early 1900’s to the amazingly clear
picture it is at today? This article
will cover the entire life of film animation by discussing the notable
progressions that have been made over the years.
Animation
was actually not brought into the film world by the United States, but rather by
a French scientist named Charles-Emile Reynaud. He invented a
large-scale system called Theatre
Optique in 1888, which could take a strip of pictures or images
and project them onto a screen. To
create the animations, individually created images were painted directly onto
the frames of a flexible strip of transparent gelatine (with film perforations
on the edges), and run through his projection system. Reynaud demonstrated his system in 1892 to Paris' Musee Grevin,
which contained three animated films lasting twelve to fifteen minutes
each. This showing is known to be
the first ever instance of a projected animated cartoon film (Dirks).
Reynaud’s
concept of film animation was one that early comic strip artists eagerly accepted
and strived to further develop.
As the popularity of newspaper comic strips flourished in the early 20th
century, The New York Herald’s comic-strip animator and sketch artist,
Winsor McCay, sought to bring his comic strips to life. Although McCay was not
the first to create a cartoon animation, he nonetheless helped to define the
new industry by becoming the first
to establish the technical method of animating graphics. McCay created his first prominent,
successful, and realistic cartoon animation Gertie the Dinosaur. The animation consisted of 10,000 drawings; backgrounds
included, and illustrated the "interactive" illusion of walking into
the animation (Dirks).
(Dirks)
Animation
made a monumental progression during the silent film era when Producer John
Randolph Bray with Bray Picture Corporation's created the first color
cartoon. Using the expensive Brewster
Natural Color Process, a 2-emulsion color process that was the result of an unsuccessful
precursor of Technicolor, Bray was able to produce the film The
Debut of Thomas Cat in 1920. In creation, the drawings were made on
transparent celluloid, then painted on the reverse side, and finally
photographed with a two-color camera (System Four: Glorious Technicolor). Even
though The Debut of Thomas Cat
was produced in the early 1920’s, the regular use of color in animations
did occur until later years.
The
now world famous know Mickey Mouse, first named as Mortimer Mouse, was Walt
Disney’s creation after being forced to resign rights of the then popular
carton character Oswald, to Walter Lance. To help make Mickey stand out from other cartoon characters
at the dawn of the talkies, the 7-minute Steamboat Willie was re-released with
sound. Accordingly, this November
18th, 1928 premiere date is considered Mickey Mouse's screen debut
performance as well as his birthdate.
More importantly, Steamboat Willie
was the first cartoon with a post-produced
synchronized soundtrack of music,
dialogue, and sound effects. Strangely,
Mickey's first sound cartoon
did not include Mickey's voice.
His voice was not used until his ninth short animation segment, The Karnival Kid, when he said the
words, "Hot dogs!" using Walt Disney’s voice for Mickey (Disney History). The creation of Mickey
Mouse put Walt Disney on the fast track to becoming the most influential
pioneer in the field of character-based animation.
(Cartoon Animation Software)
At
the same time, serious rivals to Disney's animation production Fleischers brothers,
Max, Dave, Joe, and Lou, were making technical innovations that would
revolutionize the art of animation. In 1917, Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope to streamline the frame-by-frame
copying process and overlay drawings on live action film. Between the 20’s and 40’s the Fleischer’s
created memorable cartoon characters such as Bimbo, Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman,
which all stared in their short animation segments (Dirks).
As
it became more common for families to own televisions in their homes throughout
the 40’s and 50’s the production of cartoons took off. Fox’s Mighty Mouse was the first
cartoon character to appear on Saturday mornings. CBS-TV took the Mighty Mouse cartoons and packaged them into
a very popular Saturday morning television show called Mighty Mouse
Playhouse, beginning in 1955 and lasting for a record eleven years (Dirks).
Similarly, Warner Brothers and MGM
Studies were not far behind Fox in creating their version of Saturday morning cartoons. Warner Brothers creation of The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies was intended to
challenge the style, form, and creative content of Disney's pastoral animations
in the early 1930s and after. Their cartoons were characterized as being more
hip, adult-oriented, and urban than the comparable Disney cartoons of the same
period. While at Warner Brothers
and after moving to MGM, Tex Avery, with the help of fellow animators, created
some of the most famous Saturday morning cartoon characters, such as Daffy
Duck, Bugs Bunny, Pink Panther, Droopy Dog, Tom, and Jerry. But even with the intentions to surpass
Disney Studios cartoon animations, neither MGM or Warner Brothers would be
prepared for Disney’s “Golden Age” that was coming (Warner
Brothers Animation).
(Warner Brothers Animation)
Disney’s
“Golden Age” is a 25-year long era where Disney Studios dominated the animation
industry, creating over twenty full-length animated motion pictures. The first of these animated films is
the Disney classic Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs. The 1937, film
cost 1.5 million dollars and 4 years to make, but was the 1938’s top moneymaker
at 8 million dollars. After
winning two Oscars for the production of Pinocchio,
Disney experimented with other milestone, groundbreaking techniques that
combined classical music and animation in seven separate episodes in the film Fantasia. The 1940 film was the first to
be released in a multichannel stereo sound format called Fantasound, decades ahead of its
time. Fantasound required a
special system devised for playback, but was rarely used in showings due to the
fact that only 6 theaters were equipped to play Fantasound. Walt Disney
continued to control the animation industry by producing the top three grossing
films in the 1950’s, Lady and the Tramp,
Peter Pan, and Cinderella (Disney History).
With
full-length animation pictures now in the theaters and on the television screen,
no extreme advancements in animation occurred in the 1960’s or 1970’s. Even though studios continued to
produce new animations such as Warner Brothers television cartoon production of
The Peanuts in 1965, and Disney’s
full-length animation production of The
Jungle Book in 1967, adult-related animations quickly took over in the
1970’s. Fritz the Cat, the first X-rated animation to be produced made a
whooping 100 million dollars at the box office in 1972 (Dirks). The film about a sex and drug loving,
hippie cat was among other adult rated films that would be released throughout
the 1970’s.
As
the peace loving 70’s era came to an end, animation studios continued to
struggle to produce new, high grossing animations in the early 80’s. It was not until the late 80’s and
early 90’s that Disney Studios finally began to win Oscars and Academy Awards
for their films again. The
productions of The Little Mermaid, Aladdin,
and Beauty and the Beast were all advanced, more mature animations targeting
a broader aged crowd. The film The Lion King was the first Disney film
based upon an in-house original story, rather than upon a well-known children's
narrative. It was also Disney's
first film to totally disregard human characters. The wildebeest stampede scene integrated new 3-D computer
animation with traditional drawing animation techniques. After setting a box-office
record of over $312 million domestic and $784 million worldwide at the
box-office, The Lion King spurred a boom in animation production, and
other animation production studios besides Disney entered the picture (Disney
History).
Newly
independent Pixar Animation Studios teamed up with Disney, in a 1991 deal worth
$26 million, to create the first
completely computer-generated animated feature film, Toy Story. The film that was also Pixar’s debut, used visuals that were
entirely generated from computers, creating a wonderfully realistic 3-D world
with lighting, shading, and textures (Pixar History). As animated films had reached a new level with the use of
computer technology, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided
that full-length animations deserved their own Oscar awards category. In 2001, first Best Animated Feature
Film of the Year Oscar was presented to Shrek, a computer-animated film that
added elements to CGI such as fire, liquids, digital humans, and clothing.
Together,
Disney and Pixar’s first five feature films grossed more than $2.5 billion
worldwide, giving Pixar the highest per film average gross of any production
company. In early 2006, the Walt Disney Co. bought longtime partner Pixar
Animation Studios Inc. for $7.4 billion in stock, after a twelve-year
relationship (Pixar History).
Today,
the 21st century has seen advancements in 3D and an explosion of
releases of both 3-D and IMAX films. There have been many varieties of 3-D,
including Disney Digital 3D, Real D 3D, InTru3D, D-BOX, and IMAX 3D. And with
most movie theaters converting many of their screens to the 3D format there is
an expected increase in the demand in bookings for 3D films. Looking back at the rate of progression
of animation over the last 100 years, it would not be surprising to see the
animation industry continue to shock the world with new and better
advancements.
(Animation)
Works Cited
"Animation." How It's Made. Science
Channel. n.d. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWlo8ODLW4o>.
"Cartoon Animation Software." iKIT Movie .
iKIT Systems Ltd., 13 Oct. 2009. Web. 15 May
2012. <http://www.ikitmovie.com/blog/category/stop-motion-fun/>.
Dirks, Tim. AMC Filmsite. AMC Networks, Inc., May
1996. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://www.filmsite.org/animatedfilms.htmll>.
Disney History. The Walt Disney Company, n.d. Web. 15
May 2012. <http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/about-disney/disney-history>.
Pixar History.
Pixar, 2012. Web. 15 May 2012 <http://www.pixar.com/companyinfo/history/84.html>.
"System Four: Glorious Technicolor." Technicolor
History. The American Widescreen Museum,
2003. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/oldcolor/technicolor5.htm>.
"US Movie Market Summary 1995 to 2012." The
Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC.,
2012. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://www.the-numbers.com/market/>.
"Warner Brothers Animation." WarnerBrothers.com.
Warner Brothers, 2012. Web. 15 May
2012. <http://www.warnerbros.com/studio/divisions/television/animation.html>.
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