The History of Animated Films:
From Early Cartoons to CGI Masterpieces

Animation has evolved from simple optical devices to sophisticated computer technologies over the past century and a half. Experiments with moving images began long before the invention of cinema, and today animated films gross billions of dollars at the box office and win top film awards.

Background: Optical Toys and Early Devices

The theory of animated images emerged half a century before the advent of cinema. Victorian inventors created devices for entertaining guests in salons and for magic shows using projections. They discovered the principle of persistence of vision: if images of stages of movement are shown in rapid succession, the human eye perceives them as continuous motion.

In 1833, the phenakistiscope, the first animation device using rapid sequential image replacement, was introduced. Images were arranged radially on a disk with small rectangular holes along the edge. The animation could be viewed through slits in the rotating disk in front of a mirror.

Praxinoscope and the optics theater

The next step was the praxinoscope, invented in 1877 by the Frenchman Charles-Émile Reynaud. Its name comes from ancient Greek words and translates as "action spectator." The device used mirrors instead of narrow slits, producing a brighter and less distorted image than the zoetrope.

In 1888, Reynaud improved on his invention, creating an optical theater. Instead of a single sequence of images inside a cylinder, he used a long transparent film with pictures, wound between two reels. This allowed for the creation of what is considered the first projected animated film. The first program in 1892 included three cartoons: "Poor Pierrot," "Un bon bock," and "The Clown and His Dogs."

The birth of film animation

First experiments with film animation

In 1906, James Stuart Blackton created "Funny Faces in Funny Phases" — probably the first animation on film. That same year, Blackton experimented with stop-motion photography, photographing an object, slightly changing its position, and then photographing it again, creating a moving animation.

In 1908, French cartoonist Émile Cohl created Phantasmagorie, the first fully animated cartoon without live actors. Made from 700 drawings, each exposed twice, this two-minute film became an early example of what would later be called traditional animation. Cohl placed each drawing on a backlit glass plate, then traced the next drawing, with variations, over the previous one. The characters constantly transformed, demonstrating the fantastical possibilities of animation.

Technological breakthroughs at Fleischer Studios

Max Fleischer patented rotoscoping in 1915. This technique allowed animators to trace live action footage frame by frame, creating realistic movement. Fleischer projected live action footage of his brother dressed as a clown and carefully traced each frame to achieve natural movement.

Rotoscoping solved the problem of animating human characters. The technique was widely used by the Fleischer studio to create realistic movement and fluidity in cartoons. The method was used to create Gulliver in Gulliver’s Travels and in the dance scenes of Betty Boop. The 1934 cartoon Poor Cinderella combined rotoscoping and 3D sets to create the illusion of depth.

Disney’s Golden Age and Technological Innovation

Multiplane camera

Walt Disney strove to make his cartoons more lifelike. His team of cameramen and animators created a multi-layered panel. They used a traditional animation process in which hundreds of pieces of art moved in front of the camera at different speeds and distances from each other. This created a moving image and a sense of depth.

The camera was directed downward onto the painted layers, controlled by mechanical drives. Disney called the entire setup a "super-animation camera." The camera could be moved up or down to create a zoom effect. As the disc rotated, successive images were shown one after the other, creating a smooth animation. The praxinoscope provided a much clearer view of the moving image than the zoetrope.

Disney’s multiplane camera system used up to seven layers of images and required dozens of technicians to manipulate the planes according to the operator’s instructions. Oil paintings were mounted on separate glass panels that could move at different speeds and distances from the camera. Sometimes, the background and foreground planes moved in opposite directions to create a rotating effect.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Legend has it that the idea for Snow White dates back to when fifteen-year-old Walt Disney saw a silent version of Snow White in 1916. The idea evolved until 1934, when Walt gathered animators and told them an early version of the story.

Released in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first full-length animated film. Its production forced the team to create a longer work than ever before, and the film’s budget grew approximately sixfold from its original $250,000 (equivalent to between $5.5 million and $33 million in today’s dollars). A commercial success, re-released theatrically multiple times in subsequent years, it immediately established the dominance of the feature-length animation industry.

Variety of studios and techniques

The Golden Age of American Animation

In 1940, MGM was competing with Walt Disney Productions and Leon Schlesinger Productions. The first Tom and Jerry short, "Puss Gets the Boot," was a theatrical success and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject. William Hanna and Joseph Barbera went on to direct a total of 114 Tom and Jerry shorts for MGM’s initial release from 1940 to 1958.

Puss Gets the Boot did not win the 1940 Academy Award for Best Cartoon, but another MGM cartoon, Rudolf Ising’s The Milky Way, did, making MGM the first studio to take an Academy Award from Walt Disney.

Warner Bros. closed the original Termite Terrace studio in 1963 after more than two decades at the top. That same year, Freling and DePatie formed their own studio, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, which took over production of the Looney Tunes franchise under an agreement with Warner Bros.

UPA and limited animation

UPA Studio developed a limited animation technique that requires fewer drawings per second. This allowed for greater experimentation and a focus on storytelling through atmosphere and character psychology, rather than just detailed movement.

The technique manifested itself on screen as a distinctive aesthetic. Backgrounds were often abstract and blocky, rather than meticulously detailed. Character designs were simplified, using bold lines and shapes to convey individuality. Instead of constant character movement, a subtle shift in expression, a specific gesture, or a dynamic camera angle conveyed action and emotion.

UPA’s first successful short was "Hell-Bent for Election," actually directed by Chuck Jones. It was followed by "Brotherhood of Man" (1945), an educational cartoon promoting tolerance for all people. Its innovative, flat, stylized design went against everything Disney animation stood for, and its unique look set the standard for all subsequent UPA cartoons.

Stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen

Raymond Frederick Harryhausen created one of the earliest successful forms of stop-motion animation. Stop-motion is the process of filming one frame of a model, making adjustments, and then filming another frame. Because the film moves at 24 frames per second, the illusion of movement is created.

Harryhausen developed a form of stop-motion model animation known as Dynamation. Beginning with Mighty Joe Young in 1949, Harryhausen worked on many popular science fiction films, creating aliens, prehistoric creatures, and mythical beasts. He finally retired after completing work on Clash of the Titans in 1981.

Harryhausen’s creatures were renowned for their incredible detail, known as "Dynamation," which allowed them to blend seamlessly with live action, and their bizarre behavior made them seem like real creatures rather than disposable special effects. Harryhausen also created one of the most famous on-screen sword fights between Jason and a group of skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts.

Soviet School of Animation

Soyuzmultfilm Studios became the main production base for Soviet animation and the creative center for animation in the USSR. In its early years, the studio adopted celluloid technology — the so-called Disney conveyor method, convenient for the mass production of hand-drawn animation.

Yuri Norshteyn developed a new technological approach — multi-plane cutaway animation — to give his animation a three-dimensional appearance, and, together with cinematographer Alexander Zhukovsky, introduced a number of innovative techniques. His films "The Fox and the Hare" (1973), "The Heron and the Crane" (1974), and "Tale of Tales" (1979) received worldwide acclaim.

"Hedgehog in the Fog" is a 1975 Soviet animated film directed by Yuri Norshteyn and produced by Soyuzmultfilm in Moscow. The Russian screenplay was written by Sergei Grigorievich Kozlov, who also published a book under the same title.

Japanese animation and the development of anime

Osamu Tezuka is often called the "god of manga" and the "father of anime." Inspired by the early Chinese animated film The Princess Iron Fan, Tezuka launched what became known as the manga revolution in Japan with the publication of New Treasure Island in 1947.

In 1961, Tezuka entered the Japanese animation industry, founding the production company Mushi Productions as a competitor to Toei Animation. Tezuka’s first work adapted for animation was "Saiyuki," a retelling of the Chinese story "Journey to the West," produced by Toei Animation.

Tezuka disliked his time at Toei, particularly the fact that he felt he had no control over "his" story or ending. This film is considered a major turning point in animation history. It pioneered the use of a simplified art style and limited animation as a means of saving labor and costs.

Tezuka founded Mushi Production, one of the first anime studios in Japan, where he created the first Japanese television anime series, Astro Boy, in 1963. The show became a significant milestone in anime history both for its success and for establishing the practice of limited animation, which became the industry standard.

The Disney Renaissance

The Disney Renaissance is the period from 1989 to 1999, during which Walt Disney Feature Animation returned to producing commercially and critically successful animated films. Ten feature films associated with this period are The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Mulan (1998), and Tarzan (1999).

The Little Mermaid is considered the true beginning of the Disney Renaissance, but its origins date back well before production began in 1985. In the 1930s, Disney considered adapting Hans Christian Andersen’s classic.

Beauty and the Beast (1991) was a huge critical and commercial success. It was the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and the only animated film to be nominated for Best Picture in a period when there were only five nominees in that category (1944–2008). The film won the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Musical or Comedy) and two Oscars for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (for "Beauty and the Beast").

In addition to becoming Disney’s highest-grossing animated film to date, Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film to gross $100 million at the U.S. box office. In 1994, it became the first film of the Disney Renaissance to receive a Broadway adaptation.

The Computer Graphics Revolution

Early Experiments with CGI

It wasn’t until producer Kathleen Kennedy saw test footage of a T. rex on a computer screen at the Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) visual effects studio that the decision was made to incorporate CG dinosaurs into the live-action film. Jurassic Park features only 14 minutes of dinosaur visual effects, about four of which were computer-generated, but their lasting impact on cinema was monumental.

Steven Spielberg and his team began with hand-drawn sketches and models of various dinosaurs. The production used computer graphics for the Velociraptors, Brachiosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus rex. The data had to be "rigged" with a digital wireframe — a structure for a dinosaur that helps provide its structure, allowing it to stand, move, and run.

Each frame in the entire jeep chase sequence took approximately 12 hours to render. Animating all the shots of the T-Rex chasing the jeep took four months to get the running sequence working properly.

Toy Story and Pixar’s triumph

The first fully computer-generated short film was "Luxo Jr.", produced by Pixar Animation Studios in 1986. This groundbreaking work demonstrated the potential of computer animation to tell entire stories, rather than simply complement live-action films. In 1988, Pixar built on this with its second short, "Tin Toy," which laid the technological foundation for the first full-length CGI film, "Toy Story."

Released in 1995, Toy Story was the first fully computer-animated feature film. It was a pioneer in many ways, and a forerunner of the animated films we see today, showcasing a stunning three-dimensional world with lighting, shading, and textures, as well as beautifully crafted characters, including human characters and living toys.

Disney, in partnership with Steve Jobs and Pixar, released Toy Story on November 22, 1995. It was the first major motion picture created entirely with computer animation, with a production budget of $30 million. The film grossed $40 million in its first five days, on its way to a worldwide box office gross of $365 million.

RenderMan rendering software was used to handle the visual scale. Total rendering time exceeded 800,000 machine hours on a "render farm" of 117 Sun Microsystems computers. Toy Story proved the commercial viability of CGI. With a budget of over $30 million, the future of computer animation depended on its financial success. The film grossed $373 million worldwide, signaling the profit potential of CG and paving the way for CGI’s dominance.

Toy Story ushered in an unprecedented era of mainstream CGI animation. By 2000, 50% of animated films used computer animation, skyrocketing to 90% by 2009. Pixar led the charge with groundbreaking sequels like Toy Story 2 (1999) and Finding Nemo (2003).

The modern animation industry

Clay animation by Nick Park

Nick Park has been animating clay figures for over 15 years, and his incredible success is evidenced by four Oscar nominations and three wins. Throughout this time, he’s been accompanied by two very friendly faces: Wallace and Gromit.

Wallace (voiced by Peter Sallis) is a lovable inventor with a passion for cheese matched only by his absent-mindedness. Gromit is Wallace’s dog, and like many loyal sidekicks, he must keep Wallace out of trouble. Park admits, "Originally, Gromit was supposed to be a cat, but it turned out to be easier to work with clay with a dog." Gromit was also planned to speak, but Park found animating a dog’s mouth too difficult, and instead focused on Gromit’s facial expressions for communication.

Illumination and the new production model

Universal Studios hired Chris Meledandri to run its new independent studio, Illumination Studios, after he introduced a new low-budget animated film production model at 20th Century Fox. Meledandri founded Illumination on January 17, 2007.

Meledandri believed that "strict cost control and successful animated films are not mutually exclusive." As head of Illumination, Meledandri continued to employ economical animation techniques, believing that the quality of the story was more important than ensuring every blade of grass and wrinkle on a face was rendered correctly.

Illumination doesn’t produce its films in-house, based in Santa Monica, but outsources animation production to other studios. Most of its films are animated by Illumination Studios Paris, a subsidiary formed through the acquisition of Mac Guff (which animated the first "Despicable Me").