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The Invention of Rotoscoping
The newest form of animation (at the time) was invented! It utilized the frame by frame technique to create more realistic animation. In the modern day, rotoscoping is still used in both animation and film. -
Laugh-O-Gram Studio, The Start of Walt Disney
Walt Disney created the company Laugh-O-Grams for the purpose of animation. It created multiple animations based on famous fairy tales such as Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. It was shut down in 1923 due to bankruptcy, but Walt Disney persevered. -
Snow White and The Seven Dwarves
After Walt Disney created "Walt Disney Productions," he and a handful of others made one of the first ever animations using only hand-drawn frame-by-frame. It set the bar for theatrical and profitable animation. -
Limited Animation
Limited animation was used to make animation cheaper, and also more efficient. It made it to where animators only had to move parts of the body to still create mostly realistic movement. It was used in countless films at that time due to how easy it then was to animate (compared to the years prior, of course.) -
Televison Animation
In 1958, animation started being used on television, whether to advertise or tell it's own stories in a usually 30-minute time frame. Hanna-Barbera, a company now known for its television animation was one of the pioneers for the medium, and made it a profitable market, starting with their first television animation: The Huckleberry Hound Show. -
First TV Show Made Into a Feature-Length Film
Hanna-Barbera, after hitting a gold mine of animation on television, did something no one had done before... Again. They released the first ever feature-length theatrical film based on an existing television animated series. While they would go on to do this for multiple series, they started with "Hey There, It's Yogi Bear!" -
A Time of Film and Strange Ideas
The first ever Charlie Brown feature-length adaptation of the Peanuts comic strip was released in 1969. However, this very-much-so family-friendly movie was followed by in the 70s, many attempts from multiple creators to market adult animated film and television series. -
CGI
CGI, or "Computer-Generated Imagery," was starting to be used in the early 80s. This meant that parts of films were made of 3-dimensional objects, instead of just drawn in two dimensions. A great example is "The Adventures of André & Wally B.," which was made entirely in CGI. -
CGI in Television Animation
CGI, after being made quite the profitable venture by Pixar, was now being used for television animation. This meant 30-minute time-frame stories all being done in 3D. A fantastic example of early CGI on television is ReBoot. -
Motion Capture
CGI was now being used to in an interesting and new way. Utilizing motion capture, which previously was only used for research and reference, was being used along with 3D modeled bodies or objects to create realistic movement. If you've ever seen the strange body suits with ping-pong balls all over them, that's different points on the body used to show the points of movement for motion capture. The was used slightly in the early 90s but was risen to wide use in the early 2000s -
Profit
Toy Story 3 was released in 2010. Besides that, it was the first animation to earn over $1Billion dollars worldwide. This showed everyone how profitable animation could really be when you have a group of like-minded individuals pursuing a goal they enjoy getting to. -
The Future of Animation
Animation has never been better! However, it has also never been such a confusing market. In the modern day, large animation studios are appealing much more to audiences, creating very hit-or-miss titles, but still making a profit. Children's animation, while it was the main market, is now starting to get pushed down by animation targeted to more mature audiences with more mature messages. We've become more open-minded.
