Modern animation of the United States
Encyclopedia
Modern animation of the United States from the late 1980s onward is sometimes referred to as the "American animation renaissance". During this period, many large American entertainment companies reformed and reinvigorated their animation
departments following a general decline during the 1970s and 1980s.
had been struggling since Walt Disney
's death in 1966, and the 1979 departure of Don Bluth
and eleven other associates from the animation department dealt Disney a major blow. Bluth formed a new studio, in direct competition with Disney.
Disney's "Nine Old Men", the animators responsible for Disney's most famous earlier works, and their associates began to hand their traditions down to a new generation of Disney animators. New faces such as Glen Keane
, Ron Clements
, John Musker
, Andreas Deja
, and others came to the studio in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period that produced such features as The Rescuers
, Pete's Dragon
(a live-action/animation hybrid), and The Fox and the Hound, as well as the featurettes The Small One
(Bluth's final Disney credit) and Mickey's Christmas Carol
(the first screen appearance of Mickey Mouse
since 1953).
At the same time, animator Steven Lisberger
brought to the studio a concept about a computer programmer who is launched into a computerized world. The film would mix live action sequences with computer animation, which had not yet been used to such an extent. The studio was impressed with the idea; the result was an ambitious $17 million film ($ in today's dollars) entitled Tron
. While Disney's stock dropped four percent after a screening for unenthusiastic investment analysts,
and in spite of only moderate grosses at the box office,
Tron received enthusiastic praise from film critic Roger Ebert
, became a cult favorite and turned out—many years later—to have a greater influence on animation (at Disney and elsewhere) than expected.
In 1984, Disney became the target of a corporate raid
by Saul Steinberg
, who intended to break up the company piece by piece. At the same time, Roy E. Disney
, who had already resigned as President in 1977, relinquished his spot on the Board of Directors in order to use his clout to change the status quo and improve the company's declining fortune. Disney escaped Steinberg's attempt by paying him greenmail
, but in its aftermath CEO Ron W. Miller
resigned, to be replaced by Michael Eisner
. Roy Disney, now back on the Board as its Vice-Chairman, convinced Eisner to let him supervise the animation department, whose future was in doubt after the disappointing box office performance of its big-budget PG-rated feature, The Black Cauldron
. The studio's next release, The Great Mouse Detective
, fared better in relation to its significantly smaller budget, but it was overshadowed by Don Bluth
's An American Tail
, another film featuring mice characters that competed directly with Mouse Detective in theaters.
In 1988
, the studio collaborated with Steven Spielberg
and Robert Zemeckis
, producing Who Framed Roger Rabbit
, a comedic detective caper that mixed live action and animation while paying homage to the Golden Age of Cartoons. Disney characters appeared with characters from Warner Bros.
, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
, Universal Pictures
and other rival studios for the first time in animation history. The film was a huge box-office success, winning four Academy Awards
, reviving interest in animation made for theaters, and popularizing the in-depth study of the history and techniques of animation. Several aging legends in the business, such as Chuck Jones
and Friz Freleng
, suddenly found themselves the center of attention, receiving acclaim and accolades after decades of being virtually ignored by audiences and industry professionals alike. Additionally, the release of many older Disney features and short cartoons on home video, and the 1983 launch of the Disney Channel
, renewed interest in the studio.
Disney followed up Who Framed Roger Rabbit and its commercially successful 1988 fully animated feature Oliver & Company
with The Little Mermaid
, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen
fairy tale with songs by Broadway
composers Alan Menken
and Howard Ashman
. Mermaid was a huge critical and commercial success, won two Academy Awards
for its song score, and became the first of a series of highly successful new Disney animated features.
The studio invested heavily in new technology, creating the Computer Animation Production System
to be used in tandem with traditional animation techniques. The first film to use this technology, The Rescuers Down Under
, only grossed $27,931,461 ($ in today's dollars), not even equalling the take of the original 1977 film.
However, the films that followed it, Beauty and the Beast
and Aladdin, won rave reviews, received multiple Oscars, and topped the box office charts. Beauty and the Beast
would eventually become the first animated feature to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and the first animated feature to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture
, followed by 2009's Up
.
In 1993, Disney released The Nightmare Before Christmas
, the first feature-length stop-motion
animated film. Disney's success peaked in 1994
, when The Lion King
grossed $328,541,776 ($ in today's dollars). As of 2010, The Lion King ranked as the 22nd highest grossing motion picture of all time in the United States. Subsequent Disney films such as Pocahontas
, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
, Hercules
, Mulan
and Tarzan
were box office and critical successes as well, albeit modestly so when compared to The Lion King
.
In 1994, the death of Disney President and Chief Operating Officer Frank Wells, and the departure of studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg
to co-found DreamWorks
, left Michael Eisner in full control of the company. At the turn of the century, films such as Atlantis: The Lost Empire
, Treasure Planet
, and Home on the Range failed to meet the critical and commercial expectations set by the early 1990s phenomena, in spite of exceptions such as Lilo & Stitch
and The Emperor's New Groove
. At the same time, the high level of popular acclaim bestowed upon Toy Story
, the first film animated entirely using computer-generated imagery
(CGI), sparked an industry trend. Based on the commercial success of Pixar
's computer-generated animated films and other CGI fare (especially Dreamworks' Shrek
, which contained numerous jabs at Katzenberg's former workplace and boss), Disney came to believe that CGI was what the public wanted—so it ceased producing traditional two-dimensional animation after Home on the Range, and switched exclusively to CGI starting with 2005's Chicken Little
.
Public rifts grew between the animation staff and management, as well as between Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney. Roy resigned from the board of directors in 2003 with a scathing letter that called the company "rapacious and soulless", adding that he considered it to be "always looking for the quick buck." He then launched the internet site SaveDisney.com in an attempt to preserve the integrity of the company and to oust Eisner, who resigned in 2005 after public opinion turned against him.
Robert Iger
succeeded Eisner; one of his first acts as CEO was to regain the rights to Walt Disney's first star Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
from NBC Universal
. After Disney's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Pixar executive producer John Lasseter
became Chief Creative Officer at both Pixar and Disney, with a plan to reintroduce two-dimensional animation, starting with The Princess and the Frog in 2009.
and NBC's The Gummi Bears, both premiered in the fall of 1985. Breaking from standard practice in the medium, the productions enjoyed substantially larger production budgets than average, allowing for higher-quality writing and animation, in anticipation of recouping profitably in rerun syndication. While The Wuzzles only lasted a season, The Gummi Bears was a sustained success with a six-season run.
In 1987, the TV animation division adapted Carl Barks
' Scrooge McDuck
comic books for the small screen with the syndicated hit DuckTales
. Its success spawned a 1990 theatrical film entitled DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
and an increased investment in syndicated cartoons. The result of this investment was The Disney Afternoon
, a two-hour syndicated television programming block of such animated shows as Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin
, Darkwing Duck
, Goof Troop
, Bonkers
, and Gargoyles
. TV animation also brought many theatrical characters to Saturday morning, including Winnie the Pooh
, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin.
was founded in Paris in the late 1980s to produce DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, which is not considered by the studio to be part of the Disney animated "canon". The practice of making non-canon direct-to-video
sequels to canon films began in 1994 with The Return of Jafar
, a sequel to Aladdin. This was a reversal of the long-standing studio policy against sequels to animated films (which did not apply to live-action films); Walt Disney has often been quoted on the subject as saying "you can't top pigs with pigs." Because of strong video sales, the studio continued to make these films in spite of negative critical reaction; 2001's Cinderella II: Dreams Come True
received a rare zero-percent rating from the review-aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes.
Under John Lasseter, the studio has brought this practice to an end.
DisneyToon also produced several non-canon entries that did receive theatrical releases, such as A Goofy Movie
and The Tigger Movie
. The latter brought the Sherman Brothers
back to the studio for their first Disney feature film score since Bedknobs and Broomsticks
in 1971.
's company had been driven to bankruptcy twice: once, as Don Bluth Productions, after the disappointing box office take of The Secret of NIMH
coincided with an animator's strike; and again, as the Bluth Group, after the Video game crash of 1983
—when Cinematronics
, in an attempt to cut its losses, charged fees and royalties of over $3 million ($ adjusted for inflation) to Bluth's company while it was working on a sequel to the laserdisc-based animated arcade videogame Dragon's Lair
.
Bluth formed Sullivan Bluth Studios
with backing from businessman Morris Sullivan
, while film director Steven Spielberg
—a long-time animation fan who was interested in producing theatrical animation—helped Bluth to produce 1986's An American Tail
. The film was a hit, grossing $47,483,002 ($ in today's dollars). During its production, the studio relocated to Ireland, taking advantage of government tax breaks for film production. Bluth's 1988 follow-up The Land Before Time
was a slightly bigger hit, grossing $48,092,846 ($ in today's dollars) and spawning 12 sequels
and a TV series
. Neither Bluth nor Spielberg were involved with any of the Land Before Time sequels; Spielberg produced the 1991 sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
without Bluth.
In order to gain more creative control, Bluth parted company with Spielberg on his next film, the 1989 release All Dogs Go to Heaven
. While the film had the misfortune of opening the same day as Disney's The Little Mermaid, it fared much better on home video.
The early 1990s were difficult for the studio; it released several box office failures. In 1992, Rock-a-Doodle
was panned by critics and ignored by audiences; its dismal box-office performance of $11,657,385 ($ in today's dollars) contributed to Sullivan Bluth's bankruptcy. Bluth's next feature, 1994's Thumbelina
fared no better critically or commercially, while A Troll in Central Park
, also released in 1994, barely got a theatrical release, grossing $71,368 against a budget of $23,000,000 (or $ against $ in current terms). Bluth and his partner Gary Goldman
pulled out of 1995's The Pebble and the Penguin
before it was completed due to disagreements with its distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
. The remaining work needed to complete the film—thirty percent of the total—was finished by a Hungarian studio, and Bluth and Goldman took their names off the film.
Sullivan Bluth Studios closed in 1995. Bluth and Goldman returned to the United States a year earlier to discuss the creation of a feature-animation division at 20th Century Fox
; the studio's three previous animated films (FernGully: The Last Rainforest
, Once Upon a Forest
, and the live-action/animation combo The Pagemaster
) had all failed. Anastasia
, a musical remake of the 1956 film
with Ingrid Bergman
, did far better than any Bluth film since All Dogs Go To Heaven, but the 2000 release of Titan A.E.
, a film far different from the ones Bluth had been making up until then, was a flop. Fox closed their animation studio soon afterwards, and has outsourced all its feature animation since then to Blue Sky Studios
.
studio to bring back its animation department, which it had abandoned in the 1960s. A team of former Hanna-Barbera
employees led by Tom Ruegger
formed a new studio, Warner Bros. Animation
, to produce Tiny Toon Adventures
, an animated series that paid homage to the Warner Bros. cartoons of Termite Terrace. The popularity of Tiny Toon Adventures among young TV viewers made the studio a contender once again in the field of animated cartoons. Tiny Toon Adventures was followed by Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs
and its spinoff Pinky and the Brain
. Not only did these cartoons bring in new viewers to Warner Bros., they also captured the attention of older viewers. Warner Bros., minus Spielberg, continued with work such as Batman: The Animated Series
. Batman quickly received wide acclaim for its animation and mature writing, and it also inspired a feature film
. Combined, these four Warner Bros. series won a total of 17 Daytime Emmy Awards.
When Disney's feature animation surged in the 1990s, Warner Bros. tried to capitalize on their rival's success with animated feature films of their own, without the assistance of Spielberg. Their films—Cats Don't Dance
, Quest for Camelot
and The Iron Giant
—failed to come close to Disney's success, although the latter film received critical praise and developed a cult following. The 2001 live action/animation hybrid Osmosis Jones
, starring Bill Murray
, was a costly commercial failure.
The perennially-popular Looney Tunes
characters made a comeback. While the older shorts continued to enjoy countless reruns and compilation specials (and a few compilation films), new Looney Tunes short features were made in the 1990s. Inspired by the success of Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit and a series of Nike
commercials teaming the characters with basketball superstar Michael Jordan
, the studio produced the live-action/animation combo Space Jam
in 1996. The film received mixed reviews, but was a moderate commercial success. However, another 2003 feature, Looney Tunes: Back in Action
, did poorly at the box office, grossing about a fourth of its $80 million budget ($ in current terms). Other modern Looney Tunes projects were in a different vein. Unlike the original shorts, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
and Baby Looney Tunes
were aimed primarily at young children, while Loonatics Unleashed
was a controversial revamping of the characters in the distant future.
, director of ground-breaking animated films like Fritz the Cat
and the original Lord of the Rings
film, returned to animation after taking a short break in the mid-1980s. In 1985, he teamed up with young Canadian-born-and-raised animator John Kricfalusi
to make a hybrid live-action/animated music video for The Rolling Stones
' The Harlem Shuffle, which was released in early 1986.
The music video put together a production team at Bakshi Animation whose next project was the short-lived TV series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
. Bakshi and company worked on several other projects in the late 1980s, but his biggest project, 1992's Cool World
, was a critically panned commercial disappointment. In 2005, Bakshi announced that he would begin working on another feature film, Last Days of Coney Island
, which he is financing himself and producing independently. As of 2008, Bakshi had suspended production on the film.
While budget became much less of an issue, overseas production houses would be chosen on a per-episode—or even per-scene—basis depending on the amount of money that was available at the moment. This resulted in wildly different levels of quality from episode to episode. This was particularly noticeable in shows like Gargoyles
and Batman: The Animated Series
, where at times characters would appear wildly off-model, requiring scenes to be redone to the dismay of their directors.
cartoons such as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
, Rambo: The Force of Freedom, ThunderCats
, Dennis the Menace
, My Little Pony
, The Transformers
, G.I. Joe, Voltron
, and reruns of Scooby Doo, Garfield and Friends
and The Pink Panther, among many others.
In 1987, The Walt Disney Company
tried its luck at syndication; DuckTales
went on the air that September and lasted 100 episodes. The success of DuckTales paved the way for a second series two years later, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
. The following year, the two shows aired together under the umbrella title The Disney Afternoon
. In 1991, Disney added another hour; the block aired in syndication until 1999.
These cartoons initially competed with the nationally broadcasted ones. In the 1980s, national TV only aired Saturday mornings
, not competing with the weekday and Sunday blocks of syndication aired by local independent stations but; however, by the 1990s, Fox and then WB started airing weekday afternoon blocks. By the end of the 1990s, both syndicated and national TV ended up losing most of its children's market to the rise of cable
TV channels like Nickelodeon
, Disney Channel
and Cartoon Network
which provided appealing children's entertainment throughout the week at nearly all hours.
was cancelled by NBC in 1990, Hanna-Barbera had no other hits on the air. Finally, its ability to successfully exploit older characters like The Flintstones
and Scooby-Doo
with new shows was coming to an end, even though the 1990 theatrical release of Jetsons: The Movie
earned $20 million ($ in today's dollars). In 1987, Great American Insurance Company
owner Carl Lindner, Jr.
became the majority shareholder of Hanna-Barbera's parent company, Taft Broadcasting
, renaming it Great American Communications.
In 1989, producer Tom Ruegger
led an exodus of Hanna-Barbera staffers to restart Warner Bros. Animation
. At first, the studio was constantly under threat of closure. However, under Fred Seibert
's guidance, Hanna-Barbera's new staff (whose ranks included Seth MacFarlane
, Butch Hartman
, and Genndy Tartakovsky
) created a new generation of Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as Dexter's Laboratory
, Johnny Bravo
, Cow and Chicken
, I Am Weasel
, The Powerpuff Girls
and Courage the Cowardly Dog
. These shows were designed to appeal to adults as well as children, and thus incorporated plenty of "adult humor", such as pop-culture references and veiled sexual innuendos.
Great American wanted out of the entertainment business, and Hanna-Barbera was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System
in 1991. Ted Turner had expressed that he mainly wanted ownership of the studio's back catalog; its launch of Cartoon Network
on October 1, 1992 provided a new audience for Hanna-Barbera cartoons, both old and new. Time Warner
acquired Turner in 1996, and thus inherited the rights to all of Hanna-Barbera's creative properties. This allowed Cartoon Network to begin airing classic Looney Tunes shorts as well. Cartoon Network's success with original programming lead them to move the reruns of old Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes cartoons to their spin-off channel Boomerang.
In 1997, Fred Seibert left Hanna-Barbera to found his own studio
. In 1998, Hanna-Barbera moved to the same building as Warner Bros. Animation; the use of the Hanna-Barbera name ceased with William Hanna's death in 2001. Cartoon Network Studios
now handles all original animation for the network.
introduced The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren and Stimpy was a wild and off-beat series that violated all the restrictions of Saturday morning cartoons, instead favoring the outrageous style of the shorts from the Golden Age period. The series' creator, John Kricfalusi
—a Ralph Bakshi
protege—was largely influenced by the classic works of Bob Clampett
. In spite of the show's popularity, the show was beset with production delays and censorship battles with Nickelodeon, which fired Kricfalusi in 1992. The show continued under the production of the network-owned Games Animation company until 1996, though many animators departed with Kricfalusi. TNN
revived the show in a more risqué form in 2003, with Kricfalusi receiving more creative freedom, but it only lasted ten episodes.
Nickelodeon
also gave birth to hit shows such as Doug
, Rugrats
, Rocko's Modern Life
, Hey Arnold!
, The Angry Beavers
, CatDog
, SpongeBob SquarePants
, and The Fairly OddParents
. Many of these shows spawned successful theatrical films as well.
switched from pay-cable to basic cable in the late 1990s, and launched a number of successful animated shows such as The Proud Family
and Kim Possible
. Around the same time, it launched Toon Disney
, a channel specifically intended for animation (which has since been replaced by Disney XD).
On cable TV
, Nickelodeon
, the Disney Channel
, and the Cartoon Network
grew to a point where they were competitive with the broadcast networks.
. The fledgling Fox network
launched their Fox Kids
programming block on weekdays and Saturdays in 1990, while The WB
joined the competition with a kid's programming block shortly after the network's 1995 launch.
When NBC compared the success of the live-action youth sitcom Saved by the Bell
to the paucity of their animated hits, they gave up on cartoons in 1992, instead concentrating on live-action teenage shows with their Saturday-morning TNBC block. ABC
was purchased by Disney in 1995, and Disney transformed ABC's Saturday schedule into a series of Disney-produced animated cartoons collectively named One Saturday Morning. CBS
was simply never able to come up with any new hits once the shows that anchored its late 1980s/early 1990s Saturday morning lineup—Muppet Babies
, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
, Garfield and Friends
, etc.—ran their respective courses. When CBS was purchased by Viacom
, which also owned Nickelodeon, Viacom simply repurposed much of the Nick Jr. lineup—in addition to adding a Saturday edition of the CBS morning-news program The Early Show
.
As a result of years of activism by Action for Children's Television
and others against shows they believed blurred the line between entertainment and advertising, the Children's Television Act
was passed in 1990. It began to be strictly enforced in 1996. The Federal Communications Commission
began requiring three hours a week of educational and informational program intended explicitly for children, at times when children were awake. Since this required three hours to be "off limits" to programs aimed at the general public, the networks naturally chose to air them on Saturday morning, when children were already watching. As a result, almost every Saturday-morning network show is required to contain some educational content. Fox and The WB worked around this problem by airing short one-hour weekday children's blocks instead of morning news shows, but those weekday blocks no longer exist (with the notable exception of PBS, which continues to have large weekday children's programming blocks as of 2010). Nonetheless, there were still a few toy-based children's programs in the 1990s, particularly Power Rangers
and Pokémon
.
Cable networks were not subject to these—or most other—FCC requirements, which allowed their series to have more leeway with content than network shows.
, debuted. Matt Groening
's creation gained its own half-hour series
in 1989, the first prime-time animated series since The Flintstones
. Although 70 percent of the first episode's
animation had to be redone, pushing the series premiere back three months, it became one of the first major hit series for the fledgling Fox network
. The Simpsons caused a sensation, entering popular culture and gaining wide acclaim for its satirical handling of American culture, families, society as a whole, and the human condition.
The show has won dozens of awards, including 24 Emmy Award
s, 26 Annie Award
s and a Peabody Award
. Time
magazine's December 31, 1999 issue named it the 20th century's best television series. A film version
grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide. On February 26, 2009, Fox renewed The Simpsons for an additional two years, "...which will secure its place as TV's longest-running prime-time series." Its 21st season began on September 27, 2009, breaking the 20-season record it once shared with Gunsmoke
.
The success of The Simpsons led Fox to develop other animated series aimed at adults, including King of the Hill
(created by Mike Judge
), Futurama
(also by Groening), Family Guy
(created by Seth MacFarlane
), American Dad!
(also by MacFarlane) and The Cleveland Show
(also by MacFarlane). King of the Hill was an instant success, running 13 seasons. Both Futurama and Family Guy were cancelled by the network; after strong DVD sales and ratings in re-runs, both returned to the air—Family Guy on Fox, and Futurama on Comedy Central.
occurred. In 1989, a festival of animation shorts, organized by Craig "Spike" Decker and Mike Gribble (known as "Spike & Mike") and originally based in San Diego, began showcasing a collection of short subject animated films. Known as the Classic Festival of Animation, it played in theatrical and non-theatrical venues across the country.
The collections were largely made up of Oscar-nominated shorts, student work from the California Institute of the Arts
, and experimental work funded by the National Film Board of Canada
. Early festivals included work by John Lasseter
, Nick Park
, Mike Judge
, and Craig McCracken
. Judge's piece, Frog Baseball, marked the first appearance of his dimwitted trademark characters Beavis and Butt-head
, while McCracken's short The Whoopass Girls in A Sticky Situation featured the introduction of the trio of little girl superheroes that would later gain popularity under their new moniker The Powerpuff Girls
.
The festival gradually turned into a program of films called Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, an underground movement for adult humor and subject matter.
approved a new series entitled Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. In a particularly postmodern twist, this show featured live-action celebrity interviews mixed with animation from the original Space Ghost
cartoon. It was the beginning of the now common practice of using old Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters for new edgier productions, such as the surrealistic Sealab 2021
, based on the short-lived early 1970s environmentally themed cartoon Sealab 2020
. Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
was about a lackluster superhero, Birdman—originally the star of Birdman and the Galaxy Trio
—who has become a lawyer. His clientele, as well as most of the other characters on the show, are made up entirely of old Hanna-Barbera characters.
Adult Swim
, a scheduling block of adult-oriented cartoons appearing on Cartoon Network beginning after primetime, premiered in 2001. Originally limited to Sunday nights, as of January 3, 2011 Adult Swim now remains on the air every night until 6:00 a.m. Eastern time. Animated series produced exclusively for Adult Swim include The Brak Show
, Aqua Teen Hunger Force
, Sealab 2021
, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, The Venture Bros.
, Perfect Hair Forever
, Stroker and Hoop
, Tom Goes to the Mayor
, Robot Chicken
, and Metalocalypse
. In addition to comedy cartoons, Adult Swim also runs popular anime
series such as Cowboy Bebop
, Ghost in the Shell
, Eureka Seven
, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood
, Bleach
, and InuYasha
.
produced several successful animated series especially for its young adult audience, including Liquid Television
, The Brothers Grunt
, Æon Flux
, Beavis and Butt-head
(and its spin-off Daria
), and Celebrity Deathmatch
. USA Network
's Duckman
, starring the voice of Jason Alexander
, found a cult following.
Another successful adult-oriented animated series was Comedy Central's South Park
, which saw its beginnings in 1995 with the short cartoon The Spirit of Christmas
. Like The Simpsons, Beavis and Butt-head and South Park were given the big screen treatment as Beavis and Butt-head Do America
and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.
in the use of computer-generated imagery
to enhance both animated sequences and live-action special effects, allowing elaborate computer-animated sequences to dominate both. This new form of animation soon dominated Hollywood special effects; the films Terminator 2: Judgment Day
and Jurassic Park
included Oscar-winning special effects sequences which made extensive use of CGI. After decades of existing as related-but-separate industries, the barrier between "animation" and "special effects" was shattered by the popularization of computerized special effects—to the point where computer enhancement of Hollywood feature films became second-nature and often went unnoticed. The Academy Award
-winning Forrest Gump
(1994) depended heavily on computerized special effects to create the illusion of Tom Hanks
shaking hands with Presidents John F. Kennedy
and Lyndon B. Johnson
, and to make Gary Sinise
convincingly appear to be a double amputee, winning a special-effects Oscar. The film Titanic
used computer effects in nearly every scene of its three-hour running time; one of the film's 11 Oscars was for special effects.
While Disney had made the film Tron
—which extensively mixed live action, traditional animation, and CGI—in 1982, and introduced the CAPS
system to enhance traditional animation in 1990's The Rescuers Down Under
, a completely computer-animated feature film had yet to be made. In 1995, Disney partnered with Pixar
to produce Toy Story
, the first feature film made entirely using CGI. The film's success was so great that other studios looked into producing their own CGI
films.
Computer animation also made inroads into television. The Saturday morning animated series ReBoot
won a large cult following among adults; it was the first of a number of CGI-generated animated series, including Beast Wars
, War Planets, and Roughnecks. The quality of the computer animation improved considerably with each successive series. Many live-action TV series (especially science fiction
TV series such as Babylon 5
) invested heavily in CGI production, creating a heretofore-unavailable level of special effects for a relatively low price.
. Founded by George Lucas
' Lucasfilm
in 1979 as a special-effects team, it was sold to Apple Computer
co-founder Steve Jobs
in 1986 due to Lucas's financial problems related to the failure of Howard the Duck
. At that time, the company primarily developed computer animation hardware, but had made a name for itself by producing such acclaimed CGI short films as Tin Toy
, which won an Oscar
.
When the company saw financial problems, it branched in to TV-commercial production; it also made a deal with the Walt Disney Company to produce feature films. The first of these films, 1995's Toy Story
, was a smash hit, giving way to the success of A Bug's Life
and Toy Story 2
.
Pixar's string of critical and box-office successes continued with Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo
, The Incredibles
, Cars, Ratatouille
, WALL-E
, Up
and Toy Story 3
all receiving rave reviews, earning huge profits, winning awards, and overshadowing Disney's in-house offerings. Disney produced a CGI/live action feature film of its own without Pixar (Dinosaur
), but the film received a mixed reaction, even though it was a financial success. During the later years of Michael Eisner's management, friction between Disney and Pixar grew to a point that Pixar considered finding another partner when they could not reach an agreement over profit sharing. When Eisner stepped down in 2005, his replacement, Robert Iger
, bought Pixar in a $7.4 billion all-stock deal ($ in today's dollars) that turned Steve Jobs into Disney's largest individual shareholder. Following the merger, Pixar's John Lasseter
was placed in charge of greenlighting all new animated films for the combined company under his new role of Chief Creative Officer.
left Disney to become a co-partner of Steven Spielberg and David Geffen
in the new studio Dreamworks
, the studio naturally became interested in animation. Its first film, Antz
, did not do as well as the Disney-Pixar releases. However, DreamWorks succeeded in its partnership with the British stop motion animation studio Aardman Animations
with Chicken Run
in 2000, and later the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2006.
Furthermore, DreamWorks finally had their own success in 2001 with the computer animated feature film Shrek
, a gigantic box-office hit that overpowered Disney's summer release for that year, Atlantis
. Shrek established Dreamworks as Disney's first major competitor in feature-film animation. Dreamworks' commercial success continued with three Shrek sequels, Shark Tale
, Madagascar
, Over the Hedge
, Bee Movie
, Kung Fu Panda
, Monsters vs. Aliens
, and How to Train Your Dragon
. DreamWorks Animation eventually became a separate company from its parent.
released a hugely successful CGI-animated feature in early 2002 entitled Ice Age
. Also in 2002, Paramount
offered Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, TWC
offered Hoodwinked!, and Columbia produced Open Season
. Warner Brothers had a major success in 2006 with the Oscar winning feature film, Happy Feet, while Universal Studios
attempted several times to become a viable participant in the market, finally achieving the goal in 2010 with Despicable Me
.
In spite of all its success, computer animation still relies on cartoony and stylized characters. 2001 saw the first attempt to create a fully animated world using photorealistic human actors in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
, which met with moderate critical success but did not do well at the box office.
The use of CGI special effects in live-action film increased to the point where George Lucas
considered his 2002 film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
to be primarily an animated film that used real-life actors. A growing number of family-oriented films began to use entirely computer-generated characters that interacted on the screen with live-action counterparts, such as Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
, Gollum
in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and the title character of Hulk
. While computer generated characters have become acceptable to moviegoers, there have yet to be any fully animated films featuring virtual human actors, or "synthespians".
animation software—produced in the U.S. and elsewhere, and distributed through the Internet
. The term "Flash animation" refers not only to the file format, but to a certain kind of movement and visual style that is seen in many circles as simplistic or unpolished. There are dozens of Flash-animated television series, countless more Flash animated television commercials, and award-winning online shorts in circulation.
Some popular Flash animated cartoons include Joe Cartoons, Weebl and Bob
, Happy Tree Friends
, Homestar Runner
, the Brackenwood
Series, Making Fiends and Salad Fingers
.
, the failure of their much-hyped Treasure Planet
seemed to ensure that there would be major cutbacks at Disney's animation studio. In 2004, Disney released what it announced to be its last traditionally-animated film, Home on the Range. The film received mixed reviews and was not successful at the box office.
That same year, the live-action film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
was released. It was notable for being filmed entirely in front of a bluescreen, with the background being completely computer generated; only the actors and some props were real. Robert Zemeckis
' film The Polar Express
, starring Tom Hanks
in five roles, was completely CGI animation, but used performance capture technology to animate the characters. Zemeckis followed The Polar Express with two other motion capture films: Beowulf
and Disney's A Christmas Carol.
However, the release of The Princess and the Frog and The Secret of Kells in 2009, both nominated for an Academy Award, marked a renewed interest in traditional animation. In the same year, Coraline
and Wes Anderson
's Fantastic Mr. Fox
(also Academy Award nominated) renewed interest in stop motion animation.
for anything other than musical scores. The unprecedented nomination of Disney's Beauty and the Beast for Best Picture and five other awards changed things, even though it only won two Oscars for its song score. Animation had become so widely accepted by the beginning of the 21st century that, in 2001, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
introduced a new Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
.
The three contenders for first honoree in this award were both CGI feature films: Shrek
, by Dreamworks, Monsters, Inc.
, by Disney and Pixar, and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, by Nickelodeon and Paramount. The award that year went to Shrek. Films that year which were passed up included the acclaimed adult oriented film Waking Life
and the photorealistic CGI film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
.
Hayao Miyazaki
's critically acclaimed Spirited Away
won the Oscar in 2002. Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo
received the 2003 award, defeating nominees The Triplets of Belleville and Brother Bear. Since then, Pixar has won the most awards in this category.
s are presented each February by the Hollywood branch of the International Animated Film Association
for achievements in the fields of film and television animation in the United States. Formed in 1972 to celebrate lifetime contributions to the various fields within animation, the awards started to honor animation as a whole, including current offerings.
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
departments following a general decline during the 1970s and 1980s.
Disney
At the start 1980s, Walt Disney ProductionsThe Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
had been struggling since Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's death in 1966, and the 1979 departure of Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...
and eleven other associates from the animation department dealt Disney a major blow. Bluth formed a new studio, in direct competition with Disney.
Disney's "Nine Old Men", the animators responsible for Disney's most famous earlier works, and their associates began to hand their traditions down to a new generation of Disney animators. New faces such as Glen Keane
Glen Keane
Glen Keane is an American animator, author, illustrator and director. Keane is best known for his character animation at Walt Disney Studios for feature films including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, and Tangled...
, Ron Clements
Ron Clements
Ronald Francis "Ron" Clements is an American animation director and producer. He is one half of America's leading contemporary animation team with John Musker.-Life and career:...
, John Musker
John Musker
John Musker is an American animation director. Along with Ron Clements, he makes up the duo of one of the Disney animation studio's leading director teams.-Life and career:...
, Andreas Deja
Andreas Deja
Andreas Deja is as an animator most noted for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Deja's creations include the Disney villains Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, Jafar from Aladdin and Scar from The Lion King. He is a recipient of the 2006 Winsor McCay Award.-Early life:Andreas Deja was born...
, and others came to the studio in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period that produced such features as The Rescuers
The Rescuers
The Rescuers is a 1977 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney Productions and first released on June 22, 1977. The 23rd film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film is about the Rescue Aid Society, an international mouse organization headquartered in New York and shadowing...
, Pete's Dragon
Pete's Dragon
Pete's Dragon is a 1977 live-action/animated musical film from Walt Disney Productions and the first Disney film to be recorded in the Dolby Stereo sound system...
(a live-action/animation hybrid), and The Fox and the Hound, as well as the featurettes The Small One
The Small One
The Small One is a Christmas animated short film created by Walt Disney Productions and was originally released to theaters in the United States by Buena Vista Distribution Company on December 15, 1978, before the 1978 re-release of Pinocchio. It started off as a children's book, by Charles...
(Bluth's final Disney credit) and Mickey's Christmas Carol
Mickey's Christmas Carol
Mickey's Christmas Carol is a 1983 American animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and distributed by Buena Vista Distribution Company. It was directed and produced by Burny Mattinson...
(the first screen appearance of Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
since 1953).
At the same time, animator Steven Lisberger
Steven Lisberger
Steven M. Lisberger is an American film director, producer and writer famous for directing Tron in 1982.Lisberger was born in 1951 in New York City and grew up in Hazelton, Pennsylvania. He is a 1974 graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts...
brought to the studio a concept about a computer programmer who is launched into a computerized world. The film would mix live action sequences with computer animation, which had not yet been used to such an extent. The studio was impressed with the idea; the result was an ambitious $17 million film ($ in today's dollars) entitled Tron
Tron
-Film:*Tron , a franchise that began in 1982 with the Walt Disney Pictures film Tron** Tron , a 1982 science fiction film by Disney, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, Dan Shor and David Warner...
. While Disney's stock dropped four percent after a screening for unenthusiastic investment analysts,
and in spite of only moderate grosses at the box office,
Tron received enthusiastic praise from film critic Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
, became a cult favorite and turned out—many years later—to have a greater influence on animation (at Disney and elsewhere) than expected.
In 1984, Disney became the target of a corporate raid
Corporate raid
A corporate raid is an American English business term for buying a large interest in a corporation and then using voting rights to enact measures directed at increasing the share value...
by Saul Steinberg
Saul Steinberg (business)
Saul Steinberg is a former financier, insurance executive, and corporate raider. He started a computer leasing company , which he used in an audacious and successful takeover of the much larger Reliance Insurance Company in 1968...
, who intended to break up the company piece by piece. At the same time, Roy E. Disney
Roy E. Disney
Roy Edward Disney, KCSG was a longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company, which his father Roy Oliver Disney and his uncle Walt Disney founded. At the time of his death he was a shareholder , and served as a consultant for the company and Director Emeritus for the Board of Directors...
, who had already resigned as President in 1977, relinquished his spot on the Board of Directors in order to use his clout to change the status quo and improve the company's declining fortune. Disney escaped Steinberg's attempt by paying him greenmail
Greenmail
Greenmail or greenmailing is the practice of purchasing enough shares in a firm to threaten a takeover and thereby forcing the target firm to buy those shares back at a premium in order to suspend the takeover....
, but in its aftermath CEO Ron W. Miller
Ron W. Miller
Ronald William "Ron" Miller is a former professional American football player, the son-in-law of Walt Disney, and a former president and CEO of what is now The Walt Disney Company.-Marriage and early career:...
resigned, to be replaced by Michael Eisner
Michael Eisner
Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman. He was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.-Early life:...
. Roy Disney, now back on the Board as its Vice-Chairman, convinced Eisner to let him supervise the animation department, whose future was in doubt after the disappointing box office performance of its big-budget PG-rated feature, The Black Cauldron
The Black Cauldron (film)
The Black Cauldron is a 1985 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and originally released to theatres on July 24, 1985...
. The studio's next release, The Great Mouse Detective
The Great Mouse Detective
The Great Mouse Detective is a 1986 animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, originally released to movie theaters on July 2, 1986 by Walt Disney Pictures...
, fared better in relation to its significantly smaller budget, but it was overshadowed by Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...
's An American Tail
An American Tail
An American Tail is a 1986 American animated adventure film directed by Don Bluth and produced by Sullivan Bluth Studios and Amblin Entertainment. The film tells the story of Fievel Mouskewitz and his family as they immigrate from Russia to America for freedom. However, Fievel gets lost and must...
, another film featuring mice characters that competed directly with Mouse Detective in theaters.
In 1988
1988 in film
-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:* Act of Piracy* Action Jackson, starring Carl Weathers, Craig T. Nelson, Vanity, Sharon Stone* The Adventures of Baron Munchausen* Akira* Alice...
, the studio collaborated with Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
and Robert Zemeckis
Robert Zemeckis
Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,...
, producing Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
, a comedic detective caper that mixed live action and animation while paying homage to the Golden Age of Cartoons. Disney characters appeared with characters from Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
, Universal Pictures
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
and other rival studios for the first time in animation history. The film was a huge box-office success, winning four Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
, reviving interest in animation made for theaters, and popularizing the in-depth study of the history and techniques of animation. Several aging legends in the business, such as Chuck Jones
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...
and Friz Freleng
Friz Freleng
Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
, suddenly found themselves the center of attention, receiving acclaim and accolades after decades of being virtually ignored by audiences and industry professionals alike. Additionally, the release of many older Disney features and short cartoons on home video, and the 1983 launch of the Disney Channel
Disney Channel
Disney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...
, renewed interest in the studio.
Disney followed up Who Framed Roger Rabbit and its commercially successful 1988 fully animated feature Oliver & Company
Oliver & Company
Oliver & Company is a 1988 American animated film in which a homeless kitten named Oliver joins a gang of dogs to survive on the 1980s New York City streets. The film was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and became the twenty-seventh animated feature released in the Walt Disney Animated...
with The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (1989 film)
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...
, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen
Hans Christian Andersen was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."...
fairy tale with songs by Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
composers Alan Menken
Alan Menken
Alan Menken is an American musical theatre and film composer and pianist.Menken is best known for his numerous scores for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas have each won him two Academy Awards...
and Howard Ashman
Howard Ashman
Howard Elliott Ashman was an American playwright and lyricist. Ashman first studied at Boston University and Goddard College and then went on to achieve his master's degree from Indiana University in 1974...
. Mermaid was a huge critical and commercial success, won two Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for its song score, and became the first of a series of highly successful new Disney animated features.
The studio invested heavily in new technology, creating the Computer Animation Production System
Computer Animation Production System
The Computer Animation Production System is a proprietary collection of software programs, scanning camera systems, servers, networked computer workstations, and custom desks developed by The Walt Disney Company together with Pixar in the late-1980s...
to be used in tandem with traditional animation techniques. The first film to use this technology, The Rescuers Down Under
The Rescuers Down Under
The Rescuers Down Under is a 1990 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on November 16, 1990...
, only grossed $27,931,461 ($ in today's dollars), not even equalling the take of the original 1977 film.
However, the films that followed it, Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirtieth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and the third film of the Disney Renaissance period...
and Aladdin, won rave reviews, received multiple Oscars, and topped the box office charts. Beauty and the Beast
Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirtieth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and the third film of the Disney Renaissance period...
would eventually become the first animated feature to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and the first animated feature to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
, followed by 2009's Up
Up (2009 film)
Up is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and presented in Disney Digital 3-D. The film premiered on May 29, 2009 in North America and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film...
.
In 1993, Disney released The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The Nightmare Before Christmas, often promoted as Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, is a 1993 stop motion musical fantasy film directed by Henry Selick and produced/co-written by Tim Burton. It tells the story of Jack Skellington, a being from "Halloween Town" who opens a portal to...
, the first feature-length stop-motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
animated film. Disney's success peaked in 1994
1994 in film
1994 was a significant year in film.The top grosser worldwide was The Lion King, which to date stands as the highest-grossing traditionally-animated film of all time...
, when The Lion King
The Lion King
The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
grossed $328,541,776 ($ in today's dollars). As of 2010, The Lion King ranked as the 22nd highest grossing motion picture of all time in the United States. Subsequent Disney films such as Pocahontas
Pocahontas (1995 film)
Pocahontas is the 33rd animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and was originally released to selected theaters on June 16, 1995 by Walt Disney Pictures...
, The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released to theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirty-fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is inspired by Victor Hugo's novel of...
, Hercules
Hercules (1997 film)
Hercules is a 1997 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirty-fifth animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film was directed by Ron Clements and John Musker...
, Mulan
Mulan
Mulan is a 1998 American animated film directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook, with story by Robert D. San Souci and screenplay by Rita Hsiao, Philip LaZebnik, Chris Sanders, Eugenia Bostwick-Singer, and Raymond Singer. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney...
and Tarzan
Tarzan (1999 film)
Tarzan is a 1999 American animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on June 18, 1999...
were box office and critical successes as well, albeit modestly so when compared to The Lion King
The Lion King
The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
.
In 1994, the death of Disney President and Chief Operating Officer Frank Wells, and the departure of studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg
Jeffrey Katzenberg
Jeffrey Katzenberg is an American film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation. He is perhaps most famous for his period as chairman of The Walt Disney Company's film division, and for producing DreamWorks animated films such as Shrek, Antz, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Chicken...
to co-found DreamWorks
DreamWorks
DreamWorks Pictures, also known as DreamWorks, LLC, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming...
, left Michael Eisner in full control of the company. At the turn of the century, films such as Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a 2001 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Written by Tab Murphy, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, and produced by Don Hahn, it is the first science fiction film in the Disney animated features canon and the 41st overall. The film...
, Treasure Planet
Treasure Planet
Treasure Planet is a 2002 animated science fiction film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 27, 2002...
, and Home on the Range failed to meet the critical and commercial expectations set by the early 1990s phenomena, in spite of exceptions such as Lilo & Stitch
Lilo & Stitch
This article is about the movie. For the television series, see Lilo & Stitch: The Series.Lilo & Stitch is a 2002 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released on June 21, 2002...
and The Emperor's New Groove
The Emperor's New Groove
The Emperor's New Groove is a 2000 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures through Buena Vista Distribution on December 15, 2000. It is the 40th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics...
. At the same time, the high level of popular acclaim bestowed upon Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
, the first film animated entirely using computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
(CGI), sparked an industry trend. Based on the commercial success of Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
's computer-generated animated films and other CGI fare (especially Dreamworks' Shrek
Shrek
Shrek is a 2001 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. Loosely based on William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book Shrek!...
, which contained numerous jabs at Katzenberg's former workplace and boss), Disney came to believe that CGI was what the public wanted—so it ceased producing traditional two-dimensional animation after Home on the Range, and switched exclusively to CGI starting with 2005's Chicken Little
Chicken Little (2005 film)
Chicken Little is a 2005 computer-animated science fiction family comedy film loosely based on the fable The Sky Is Falling. It was the 46th animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation...
.
Public rifts grew between the animation staff and management, as well as between Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney. Roy resigned from the board of directors in 2003 with a scathing letter that called the company "rapacious and soulless", adding that he considered it to be "always looking for the quick buck." He then launched the internet site SaveDisney.com in an attempt to preserve the integrity of the company and to oust Eisner, who resigned in 2005 after public opinion turned against him.
Robert Iger
Robert Iger
Robert A. "Bob" Iger is the president and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company. He was named president of Disney in 2000, and later succeeded Michael Eisner as chief executive in 2005, after a successful effort by Roy E. Disney to shake-up the management of the company...
succeeded Eisner; one of his first acts as CEO was to regain the rights to Walt Disney's first star Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit is an anthropomorphic rabbit and animated cartoon character created by Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney for films distributed by Universal Pictures in the 1920s and 1930s...
from NBC Universal
NBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
. After Disney's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, Pixar executive producer John Lasseter
John Lasseter
John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, director and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering....
became Chief Creative Officer at both Pixar and Disney, with a plan to reintroduce two-dimensional animation, starting with The Princess and the Frog in 2009.
Television animation
After 30 years of resisting offers to produce television animation, Disney finally relented once Michael Eisner, who had a background in TV, took over. The first TV cartoons to carry the Disney name, CBS's The WuzzlesThe Wuzzles
Disney's Wuzzles is an American animated television series created for Saturday morning television, and was first broadcast on September 14, 1985 on CBS. An idea of Michael Eisner for his new Disney television animation studio, the Wuzzles are crossbred animals which sport a combined appearance of...
and NBC's The Gummi Bears, both premiered in the fall of 1985. Breaking from standard practice in the medium, the productions enjoyed substantially larger production budgets than average, allowing for higher-quality writing and animation, in anticipation of recouping profitably in rerun syndication. While The Wuzzles only lasted a season, The Gummi Bears was a sustained success with a six-season run.
In 1987, the TV animation division adapted Carl Barks
Carl Barks
Carl Barks was an American Disney Studio illustrator and comic book creator, who invented Duckburg and many of its inhabitants, such as Scrooge McDuck , Gladstone Gander , the Beagle Boys , The Junior Woodchucks , Gyro Gearloose , Cornelius Coot , Flintheart Glomgold , John D...
' Scrooge McDuck
Scrooge McDuck
Scrooge McDuck is a cartoon character created in 1947 by Carl Barks and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Scrooge is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a red or blue frock coat, top hat, pince-nez glasses, and spats...
comic books for the small screen with the syndicated hit DuckTales
DuckTales
DuckTales is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. Based on Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge comic book series, it premiered on September 18, 1987 and ended on November 28, 1990 with a total of four seasons and 100 episodes...
. Its success spawned a 1990 theatrical film entitled DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp
DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp is a 1990 American animated feature film based on the animated children's television series DuckTales. It was released by Walt Disney Pictures on August 3, 1990. Although it was a theatrically released animated film, it was the first feature outside...
and an increased investment in syndicated cartoons. The result of this investment was The Disney Afternoon
The Disney Afternoon
The Disney Afternoon was a created-for-syndication two-hour television programming block which aired from September 10, 1990, until Fall 1999. At that time, it was taken out of syndication, and a new Disney weekday afternoon block was started on UPN. The Disney Afternoon was produced by The Walt...
, a two-hour syndicated television programming block of such animated shows as Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin
TaleSpin
TaleSpin is a half-hour American animated television series based in the fictional city of Cape Suzette, that first aired in 1990 as part of The Disney Afternoon, with characters adapted from Disney's 1967 animated feature The Jungle Book. The name of the show is a play on "tailspin", the rapid,...
, Darkwing Duck
Darkwing Duck
DarkWing Duck is an American animated television series produced by The Walt Disney Company that ran from 1991–1992 on both the syndicated programming block The Disney Afternoon and Saturday mornings on ABC. It featured the eponymous anthropomorphic duck superhero whose alter ego is mild-mannered...
, Goof Troop
Goof Troop
Disney's Goof Troop is an American animated television series from The Walt Disney Company featuring Goofy as a father figure and bonding with his son Max.-Premise:...
, Bonkers
Bonkers (TV series)
Bonkers is an animated American television series that aired from September 4, 1993 to February 23, 1994 in first-run syndication . The syndicated run was available both separately, and as part of The Disney Afternoon...
, and Gargoyles
Gargoyles (TV series)
Gargoyles is an American animated series created by Greg Weisman. It was produced by Greg Weisman and Frank Paur and aired from October 24, 1994 to February 15, 1997. Gargoyles is known for its dark tone, complex story arcs and melodrama...
. TV animation also brought many theatrical characters to Saturday morning, including Winnie the Pooh
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television that ran from 1988 to 1991, inspired by A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh stories.-Overview:...
, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin.
Direct to video sequels
DisneyToon StudiosDisneyToon Studios
DisneyToon Studios is an American animation studio owned by The Walt Disney Company, responsible for producing direct-to-video and occasional theatrical films for Walt Disney Studios....
was founded in Paris in the late 1980s to produce DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, which is not considered by the studio to be part of the Disney animated "canon". The practice of making non-canon direct-to-video
Direct-to-video
Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...
sequels to canon films began in 1994 with The Return of Jafar
The Return of Jafar
The Return of Jafar is a 1994 American animated film that is a direct-to-video sequel to the 1992 animated film Aladdin, both produced by The Walt Disney Company. The film was released on May 20, 1994 and serves as the origin of the Aladdin animated series...
, a sequel to Aladdin. This was a reversal of the long-standing studio policy against sequels to animated films (which did not apply to live-action films); Walt Disney has often been quoted on the subject as saying "you can't top pigs with pigs." Because of strong video sales, the studio continued to make these films in spite of negative critical reaction; 2001's Cinderella II: Dreams Come True
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True is the first direct-to-video sequel to the 1950 Disney film Cinderella. It was made in 2001 and released on February 26, 2002. It was followed by Cinderella III: A Twist in Time in 2007...
received a rare zero-percent rating from the review-aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes.
Under John Lasseter, the studio has brought this practice to an end.
DisneyToon also produced several non-canon entries that did receive theatrical releases, such as A Goofy Movie
A Goofy Movie
A Goofy Movie is a 1995 American animated musical comedy film, produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, Walt Disney Animation France S.A. and Walt Disney Animation Australia , and released in theaters on April 7, 1995 by Walt Disney Pictures...
and The Tigger Movie
The Tigger Movie
The Tigger Movie is a 2000 animated comedy-drama film co-written and directed by Jun Falkenstein. Part of the Winnie-the-Pooh series, this film features Pooh's friend Tigger in his search for his family tree and other Tiggers like himself...
. The latter brought the Sherman Brothers
Sherman Brothers
The Sherman Brothers are an American songwriting duo that specialize in musical films, made up of Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman ....
back to the studio for their first Disney feature film score since Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 musical film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution Company which combines live action and animation and was released in North America on December 13, 1971...
in 1971.
Don Bluth
Don BluthDon Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...
's company had been driven to bankruptcy twice: once, as Don Bluth Productions, after the disappointing box office take of The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of NIMH is a 1982 animated film directed by Don Bluth in his directorial debut. It is an adaptation of Robert C. O'Brien's 1971 children's novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The film was produced by Aurora Pictures and released by United Artists. While released to critical acclaim,...
coincided with an animator's strike; and again, as the Bluth Group, after the Video game crash of 1983
Video game crash of 1983
The North American video game crash was a serious event that brought an abrupt end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming in North America. Beginning in 1983, the crash almost destroyed the then-fledgling industry and led to the bankruptcy of several companies producing...
—when Cinematronics
Cinematronics
Cinematronics Incorporated was a pioneering arcade game developer that had its heyday in the era of vector display games. While other companies released games based on raster displays, early in their history, Cinematronics and Atari released vector-display games, which offered a distinctive look...
, in an attempt to cut its losses, charged fees and royalties of over $3 million ($ adjusted for inflation) to Bluth's company while it was working on a sequel to the laserdisc-based animated arcade videogame Dragon's Lair
Dragon's Lair
Dragon's Lair is a laserdisc video game published by Cinematronics in 1983. It featured animation created by ex-Disney animator Don Bluth....
.
Bluth formed Sullivan Bluth Studios
Sullivan Bluth Studios
Sullivan Bluth Studios was an American animated film production company established in 1985 by animator Don Bluth. Bluth and several colleagues, all of whom were former Disney animators, left Disney in 1979 to form Don Bluth Productions, later known as the Bluth Group...
with backing from businessman Morris Sullivan
Morris Sullivan
Morris Francis Sullivan was an American businessman who co-founded the Sullivan Bluth Studios with three former Disney animators. Sullivan Bluth Studios employeed approximately 400 people at the peak of its success...
, while film director Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
—a long-time animation fan who was interested in producing theatrical animation—helped Bluth to produce 1986's An American Tail
An American Tail
An American Tail is a 1986 American animated adventure film directed by Don Bluth and produced by Sullivan Bluth Studios and Amblin Entertainment. The film tells the story of Fievel Mouskewitz and his family as they immigrate from Russia to America for freedom. However, Fievel gets lost and must...
. The film was a hit, grossing $47,483,002 ($ in today's dollars). During its production, the studio relocated to Ireland, taking advantage of government tax breaks for film production. Bluth's 1988 follow-up The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time
The Land Before Time is a 1988 American animated adventure film directed and co-produced by Don Bluth , and executive-produced by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall....
was a slightly bigger hit, grossing $48,092,846 ($ in today's dollars) and spawning 12 sequels
The Land Before Time (series)
The Land Before Time is a series of animated films centered on dinosaurs. The series began in 1988 with The Land Before Time, directed and produced by Don Bluth and executive produced by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. It was followed by a total of 12 direct-to-video sequels, though none...
and a TV series
The Land Before Time (TV series)
The Land Before Time is an animated television series, based on characters from The Land Before Time film series created by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss. It was developed for television by Ford Riley for Universal Animation Studios and Amblin Entertainment , and first premiered on YTV in Canada...
. Neither Bluth nor Spielberg were involved with any of the Land Before Time sequels; Spielberg produced the 1991 sequel An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West is a 1991 American animated film produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio and released by Universal Pictures. It is the sequel to An American Tail, and the fourth installment in terms of the series' fictional chronology...
without Bluth.
In order to gain more creative control, Bluth parted company with Spielberg on his next film, the 1989 release All Dogs Go to Heaven
All Dogs Go to Heaven
All Dogs Go to Heaven is a 1989 Irish-English animated film directed and produced by Don Bluth and released by United Artists. The film tells the story of two dogs, Charlie B. Barkin and his loyal best friend Itchy Itchiford...
. While the film had the misfortune of opening the same day as Disney's The Little Mermaid, it fared much better on home video.
The early 1990s were difficult for the studio; it released several box office failures. In 1992, Rock-a-Doodle
Rock-A-Doodle
Rock-a-Doodle is a 1992 American animated re-telling of Edmond Rostand's comedy, Chantecler. This film was directed by Don Bluth, produced by Goldcrest Films for The Samuel Goldwyn Company, and originally released in the United States on April 3, 1992.-Plot:Chanticleer is a proud rooster whose...
was panned by critics and ignored by audiences; its dismal box-office performance of $11,657,385 ($ in today's dollars) contributed to Sullivan Bluth's bankruptcy. Bluth's next feature, 1994's Thumbelina
Thumbelina (1994 film)
Thumbelina is a 1994 American animated film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman from a screenplay by Bluth based on Hans Christian Andersen's Thumbelina. The film was produced by Don Bluth Entertainment and was released to movie theaters by Warner Bros...
fared no better critically or commercially, while A Troll in Central Park
A Troll in Central Park
A Troll in Central Park is a 1994 animated feature-length film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, creators of films such as Thumbelina, The Land Before Time, and All Dogs Go to Heaven. It was released on October 7, 1994 by Warner Bros...
, also released in 1994, barely got a theatrical release, grossing $71,368 against a budget of $23,000,000 (or $ against $ in current terms). Bluth and his partner Gary Goldman
Gary Goldman
Gary Wayne Goldman is an American Film Producer, Director, Animator, Writer and voice actor, he is well known for working on films with Don Bluth like Anastasia, An American Tail and The Land Before Time...
pulled out of 1995's The Pebble and the Penguin
The Pebble and the Penguin
The Pebble and the Penguin is a 1995 animated musical film, based on the true life mating rituals of the Adelie Penguins in Antarctica, produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. The film was released to theatres on April 11, 1995 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the United States and...
before it was completed due to disagreements with its distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
. The remaining work needed to complete the film—thirty percent of the total—was finished by a Hungarian studio, and Bluth and Goldman took their names off the film.
Sullivan Bluth Studios closed in 1995. Bluth and Goldman returned to the United States a year earlier to discuss the creation of a feature-animation division at 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
; the studio's three previous animated films (FernGully: The Last Rainforest
FernGully: The Last Rainforest
FernGully: The Last Rainforest is a 1992 Australian-American animated film directed by Bill Kroyer, produced by Peter Faiman and Wayne Young, and written by Jim Cox based on a book of the same name by Diana Young. It is a film with a strong environmental theme...
, Once Upon a Forest
Once Upon a Forest
Once Upon a Forest is an animated film produced by Hanna-Barbera in association with HTV Cymru/Wales, Ltd. and released on June 18, 1993 by 20th Century Fox....
, and the live-action/animation combo The Pagemaster
The Pagemaster
The Pagemaster is a 1994 adventure fantasy film starring Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, Patrick Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg, Frank Welker, and Leonard Nimoy...
) had all failed. Anastasia
Anastasia (1997 film)
Anastasia is a 1997 American animated musical film produced and directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. It was the first feature film to be released by Fox Animation Studios....
, a musical remake of the 1956 film
Anastasia (1956 film)
Anastasia is a 1956 American historical drama film directed by Anatole Litvak for 20th Century Fox. The film stars Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes. Supporting players include Akim Tamiroff, Martita Hunt, and, in a small role, Natalie Schafer...
with Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman
Ingrid Bergman was a Swedish actress who starred in a variety of European and American films. She won three Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and the Tony Award for Best Actress. She is ranked as the fourth greatest female star of American cinema of all time by the American Film Institute...
, did far better than any Bluth film since All Dogs Go To Heaven, but the 2000 release of Titan A.E.
Titan A.E.
Titan A.E. is an American animated post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman released in 2000. The title refers to the spacecraft that is central to the plot, with A.E. meaning "After Earth."...
, a film far different from the ones Bluth had been making up until then, was a flop. Fox closed their animation studio soon afterwards, and has outsourced all its feature animation since then to Blue Sky Studios
Blue Sky Studios
Blue Sky Studios is an American CGI-animation studio which specializes in high-resolution, computer-generated character animation and rendering. It is owned by 20th Century Fox and located in Greenwich, Connecticut...
.
Warner Bros.
After parting ways with Bluth, Spielberg turned to television animation, working with the Warner Bros.Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
studio to bring back its animation department, which it had abandoned in the 1960s. A team of former Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
employees led by Tom Ruegger
Tom Ruegger
Tom Ruegger is an American animation writer, producer, and director.-Career:In the 1980s Ruegger worked for Hanna-Barbera, writing and producing various animated series, most notably The Snorks, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.In 1989 he began...
formed a new studio, Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...
, to produce Tiny Toon Adventures
Tiny Toon Adventures
Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures, usually referred to as Tiny Toon Adventures or simply Tiny Toons, is an American animated television series created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It began production as a result of Warner Bros....
, an animated series that paid homage to the Warner Bros. cartoons of Termite Terrace. The popularity of Tiny Toon Adventures among young TV viewers made the studio a contender once again in the field of animated cartoons. Tiny Toon Adventures was followed by Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs
Animaniacs
Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs, usually referred to as simply Animaniacs, is an American animated series, distributed by Warner Bros. Television and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. The cartoon was the second animated series produced by the collaboration of Steven...
and its spinoff Pinky and the Brain
Pinky and the Brain
Pinky and the Brain is an American animated television series.The characters Pinky and the Brain first appeared in 1993 as a recurring segment on the show Animaniacs...
. Not only did these cartoons bring in new viewers to Warner Bros., they also captured the attention of older viewers. Warner Bros., minus Spielberg, continued with work such as Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series is an American animated series based on the DC Comics character Batman. The series featured an ensemble cast of many voice-actors including Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Arleen Sorkin, and Loren Lester. The series won four Emmy Awards and was nominated...
. Batman quickly received wide acclaim for its animation and mature writing, and it also inspired a feature film
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is a 1993 animated superhero film based on the fictional DC Comics character Batman, and is a spin-off of the Emmy Award-winning Batman: The Animated Series...
. Combined, these four Warner Bros. series won a total of 17 Daytime Emmy Awards.
When Disney's feature animation surged in the 1990s, Warner Bros. tried to capitalize on their rival's success with animated feature films of their own, without the assistance of Spielberg. Their films—Cats Don't Dance
Cats Don't Dance
Cats Don't Dance is a 1997 animated musical comedy film, notable as the only fully animated feature produced by Turner Entertainment's feature animation unit . The film was distributed by Warner Bros. Family Entertainment...
, Quest for Camelot
Quest for Camelot
Quest for Camelot is a 1998 animated feature film from Warner Bros. Animation, based on the novel The King's Damosel by Vera Chapman, starring the voices of Jessalyn Gilsig, Cary Elwes, Gary Oldman, Eric Idle, Don Rickles, Jane Seymour, Pierce Brosnan, Bronson Pinchot, Jaleel White, Gabriel Byrne,...
and The Iron Giant
The Iron Giant
The Iron Giant is a 1999 animated film produced by Warner Bros. Animation, based on the 1968 novel The Iron Man by Ted Hughes. Brad Bird directed the film, which stars a voice cast of Jennifer Aniston, Harry Connick, Jr., Vin Diesel, Eli Marienthal, Christopher McDonald and John Mahoney...
—failed to come close to Disney's success, although the latter film received critical praise and developed a cult following. The 2001 live action/animation hybrid Osmosis Jones
Osmosis Jones
Osmosis Jones is a 2001 live-action/animated comedy film directed by Tom Sito and Piet Kroon for the animated segments and the Farrelly brothers for the live-action segments...
, starring Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
, was a costly commercial failure.
The perennially-popular Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
characters made a comeback. While the older shorts continued to enjoy countless reruns and compilation specials (and a few compilation films), new Looney Tunes short features were made in the 1990s. Inspired by the success of Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit and a series of Nike
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...
commercials teaming the characters with basketball superstar Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan
Michael Jeffrey Jordan is a former American professional basketball player, active entrepreneur, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats...
, the studio produced the live-action/animation combo Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
in 1996. The film received mixed reviews, but was a moderate commercial success. However, another 2003 feature, Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a 2003 American live action/animated adventure comedy film directed by Joe Dante and starring Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Timothy Dalton, and Steve Martin. The film is essentially a feature-length Looney Tunes cartoon, with all the wackiness and surrealism typical...
, did poorly at the box office, grossing about a fourth of its $80 million budget ($ in current terms). Other modern Looney Tunes projects were in a different vein. Unlike the original shorts, The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries, produced by Warner Bros. Animation, is an animated television series which aired from 1995 to 2001 on Kids' WB and was later re-run on Cartoon Network...
and Baby Looney Tunes
Baby Looney Tunes
Baby Looney Tunes is a Canadian-American animated television series that shows Looney Tunes characters as toddlers. It was produced by Warner Bros. Animation....
were aimed primarily at young children, while Loonatics Unleashed
Loonatics Unleashed
Loonatics Unleashed is an American animated television series produced by Warner Bros. Animation that ran on the Kids' WB for two seasons from 2005 to 2007 in the United States, Teletoon in Canada, Kids Central in Singapore, Cartoon Network's Boomerang in Australia, Cartoon Network in the UK,...
was a controversial revamping of the characters in the distant future.
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph BakshiRalph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
, director of ground-breaking animated films like Fritz the Cat
Fritz the Cat (film)
Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American animated comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi as his feature film debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film was the first animated feature film to receive an X rating in the United States...
and the original Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a 1978 American fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi. It contains both animation and live action footage which is rotoscoped to give it a more consistent look throughout the length of the movie. It is an adaptation of the first half of the high fantasy...
film, returned to animation after taking a short break in the mid-1980s. In 1985, he teamed up with young Canadian-born-and-raised animator John Kricfalusi
John Kricfalusi
Michael John Kricfalusi , better known as John K., is a Canadian animator. He is creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, its adults-only spin-off Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", The Ripping Friends animated series, and Weekend Pussy Hunt, which was billed as "the world's first interactive web-based...
to make a hybrid live-action/animated music video for The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
' The Harlem Shuffle, which was released in early 1986.
The music video put together a production team at Bakshi Animation whose next project was the short-lived TV series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures
Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures is a 1987 revival of the classic Mighty Mouse cartoon character. Produced by Bakshi-Hyde Ventures , it aired on CBS on Saturday mornings from fall 1987 through the 1988-89 season...
. Bakshi and company worked on several other projects in the late 1980s, but his biggest project, 1992's Cool World
Cool World
Cool World is a 1992 American live-action/animated film directed by Ralph Bakshi, and starring Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne, and Brad Pitt. It tells the story of a cartoonist who finds himself in the animated world he created, and is seduced by one of his characters, a comic strip vamp who wants to...
, was a critically panned commercial disappointment. In 2005, Bakshi announced that he would begin working on another feature film, Last Days of Coney Island
Last Days of Coney Island
Last Days of Coney Island is an unfinished project written, produced, directed and animated by filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, about a NYPD detective, the prostitute he alternately loves and arrests, and the seedy characters that haunt the streets of New York City's run-down amusement...
, which he is financing himself and producing independently. As of 2008, Bakshi had suspended production on the film.
Outsourcing animation
The major reason for the increase in the quantity of American animation was the ability to outsource the actual physical animation work to cheaper animation houses in countries in South and Southeast Asia, resulting in higher frame rates at lower costs. Writing, character design, and storyboarding would be done in American offices. Storyboards, model sheets, and color guides would then be mailed overseas. This would sometimes cause troubles as none of the final product would be seen until the completed cels were mailed back to the United States.While budget became much less of an issue, overseas production houses would be chosen on a per-episode—or even per-scene—basis depending on the amount of money that was available at the moment. This resulted in wildly different levels of quality from episode to episode. This was particularly noticeable in shows like Gargoyles
Gargoyles (TV series)
Gargoyles is an American animated series created by Greg Weisman. It was produced by Greg Weisman and Frank Paur and aired from October 24, 1994 to February 15, 1997. Gargoyles is known for its dark tone, complex story arcs and melodrama...
and Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series
Batman: The Animated Series is an American animated series based on the DC Comics character Batman. The series featured an ensemble cast of many voice-actors including Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Arleen Sorkin, and Loren Lester. The series won four Emmy Awards and was nominated...
, where at times characters would appear wildly off-model, requiring scenes to be redone to the dismay of their directors.
First-run syndicated animation
The older Bugs Bunny and Popeye cartoons made way for first-run syndicatedTelevision syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
cartoons such as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is an American animated television series produced by Filmation based on Mattel's successful toy line Masters of the Universe...
, Rambo: The Force of Freedom, ThunderCats
ThunderCats
ThunderCats is an American animated television series that was produced by Rankin/Bass Productions debuting in 1984, based on the characters created by Tobin "Ted" Wolf. The series follows the adventures of a group of cat-like humanoid aliens...
, Dennis the Menace
Dennis the Menace (1986 TV series)
Dennis the Menace is an American animated series produced by DIC Entertainment , based on the comic strip by Hank Ketcham....
, My Little Pony
My Little Pony
My Little Pony is a brand of toy ponies marketed primarily to girls produced by the toy manufacturer Hasbro. These ponies can be identified by their colorful bodies and manes and a unique symbol on one or both sides of their flanks...
, The Transformers
The Transformers (TV series)
The Transformers is an animated television series depicting a war among giant robots who could transform into vehicles, other objects and animal-like forms. Written and recorded in America, the series was animated in Japan and South Korea...
, G.I. Joe, Voltron
Voltron
Voltron is the titular super robot of an anime series that features a team of young pilots, known as the Voltron Force. The team’s individual vehicles join together to form the giant super robot, with which they defend the galaxy from evil...
, and reruns of Scooby Doo, Garfield and Friends
Garfield and Friends
Garfield and Friends is an American animated television series based on the comic strip Garfield by Jim Davis. The show was produced by Film Roman, in association with United Feature Syndicate and Paws, Inc., and ran on CBS Saturday mornings from September 17, 1988 to December 10, 1994, with...
and The Pink Panther, among many others.
In 1987, The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
tried its luck at syndication; DuckTales
DuckTales
DuckTales is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. Based on Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge comic book series, it premiered on September 18, 1987 and ended on November 28, 1990 with a total of four seasons and 100 episodes...
went on the air that September and lasted 100 episodes. The success of DuckTales paved the way for a second series two years later, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. Created by Tad Stones and Alan Zaslove, it featured the established Disney characters Chip 'n' Dale in a new setting. The series premiered on the Disney Channel on March 4, 1989,...
. The following year, the two shows aired together under the umbrella title The Disney Afternoon
The Disney Afternoon
The Disney Afternoon was a created-for-syndication two-hour television programming block which aired from September 10, 1990, until Fall 1999. At that time, it was taken out of syndication, and a new Disney weekday afternoon block was started on UPN. The Disney Afternoon was produced by The Walt...
. In 1991, Disney added another hour; the block aired in syndication until 1999.
These cartoons initially competed with the nationally broadcasted ones. In the 1980s, national TV only aired Saturday mornings
Saturday morning cartoon
A Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming that has typically been scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the present; the genre's peak in popularity mostly ended in the 1990s while the popularity of...
, not competing with the weekday and Sunday blocks of syndication aired by local independent stations but; however, by the 1990s, Fox and then WB started airing weekday afternoon blocks. By the end of the 1990s, both syndicated and national TV ended up losing most of its children's market to the rise of cable
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
TV channels like Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
, Disney Channel
Disney Channel
Disney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...
and Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (United States)
Cartoon Network is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting which primarily airs animated programming. The channel was launched on October 1, 1992 after Turner purchased the animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1991...
which provided appealing children's entertainment throughout the week at nearly all hours.
From Hanna-Barbera to Cartoon Network
The late 1980s and 1990s saw huge changes in the Saturday-morning landscape. By now, the once-prosperous Hanna-Barbera Productions was beleaguered by several factors. First of all, its dominance over the networks' schedules was broken by other studios' shows. Second, when The SmurfsThe Smurfs
The Smurfs is a comic and television franchise centred on a group of small blue fictional creatures called Smurfs, created and first introduced as a series of comic strips by the Belgian cartoonist Peyo on October 23, 1958...
was cancelled by NBC in 1990, Hanna-Barbera had no other hits on the air. Finally, its ability to successfully exploit older characters like The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
and Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo
Scooby-Doo is an American media franchise based around several animated television series and related works produced from 1969 to the present day. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, was created for Hanna-Barbera Productions by writers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears in 1969...
with new shows was coming to an end, even though the 1990 theatrical release of Jetsons: The Movie
Jetsons: The Movie
Jetsons: The Movie is a 1990 animated science fiction film produced by Hanna-Barbera and released on July 6, 1990, by Universal Pictures based on the hit cartoon series, The Jetsons . The movie features the final voice roles of George O'Hanlon and Mel Blanc who both died during production of the film...
earned $20 million ($ in today's dollars). In 1987, Great American Insurance Company
American Financial Group
American Financial Group Incorporated is a holding company based in Cincinnati, Ohio whose primary business is insurance and investments. American Financial Group's purpose is to enable businesses and individuals to manage risk using insurance products and services tailored to meet their specific...
owner Carl Lindner, Jr.
Carl Lindner, Jr.
Carl Henry Lindner, Jr. was a Cincinnati businessman and one of the world's richest people. According to the 2006 issue of Forbes Magazine's 400 list, Lindner was ranked 133 and was worth an estimated $2.3 billion...
became the majority shareholder of Hanna-Barbera's parent company, Taft Broadcasting
Taft Broadcasting
The Taft Broadcasting Company, also known as Taft Television and Radio Company, Incorporated, was an American media conglomerate based in Cincinnati, Ohio....
, renaming it Great American Communications.
In 1989, producer Tom Ruegger
Tom Ruegger
Tom Ruegger is an American animation writer, producer, and director.-Career:In the 1980s Ruegger worked for Hanna-Barbera, writing and producing various animated series, most notably The Snorks, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and A Pup Named Scooby-Doo.In 1989 he began...
led an exodus of Hanna-Barbera staffers to restart Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Animation is the animation division of Warner Bros., a subsidiary of Time Warner. The studio is closely associated with the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters, among others. The studio is the successor to Warner Bros...
. At first, the studio was constantly under threat of closure. However, under Fred Seibert
Fred Seibert
Frederick "Fred" Seibert is a television and film producer and entertainment entrepreneur who owns Frederator Studios, and who has held leading positions with MTV Networks, Hanna-Barbera, and Next New Networks; he owns Frederator Studios...
's guidance, Hanna-Barbera's new staff (whose ranks included Seth MacFarlane
Seth MacFarlane
Seth Woodbury MacFarlane is an American animator, writer, comedian, producer, actor, singer, voice actor, and director best known for creating the animated sitcoms Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, for which he also voices many of the shows' various characters.A native of Kent,...
, Butch Hartman
Butch Hartman
Elmer Earl "Butch" Hartman IV is an American animator, executive producer, animation director, storyboard artist, voice actor, occasional singer, producer, and creator of the animated series The Fairly OddParents, Danny Phantom and T.U.F.F. Puppy.-Childhood:Hartman was born in Highland Park,...
, and Genndy Tartakovsky
Genndy Tartakovsky
Genndy Borisovich Tartakovsky is a Russian-American television animator, director and producer. His best-known creations are Dexter's Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Sym-Bionic Titan...
) created a new generation of Hanna-Barbera cartoons such as Dexter's Laboratory
Dexter's Laboratory
Dexter's Laboratory is an American animated television series created by Genndy Tartakovsky and produced by Cartoon Network Studios . The show is about a boy named Dexter who has an enormous secret laboratory filled with an endless collection of his inventions...
, Johnny Bravo
Johnny Bravo
Johnny Bravo is an American animated television series created by Van Partible for Cartoon Network. The series stars a muscular beefcake young man named Johnny Bravo who dons a pompadour hairstyle and an Elvis Presley-like voice and has a forward, woman-chasing personality...
, Cow and Chicken
Cow and Chicken
Cow and Chicken is an American animated series, created by David Feiss. The series shows the surreal adventures of a cow, named Cow, and her chicken brother, named Chicken. They are often antagonized by "The Red Guy", who poses as various characters to scam or hurt them...
, I Am Weasel
I Am Weasel
I Am Weasel is an American animated television series produced by Cartoon Network Studios in co-production with Hanna-Barbera, created by David Feiss, and broadcast on Cartoon Network....
, The Powerpuff Girls
The Powerpuff Girls
The Powerpuff Girls is an American animated television series created by animator Craig McCracken and produced by Hanna-Barbera for Cartoon Network...
and Courage the Cowardly Dog
Courage the Cowardly Dog
Courage the Cowardly Dog is an American animated television series created by John R. Dilworth for Cartoon Network. Its central plot revolves around a somewhat anthropomorphic dog named Courage who lives with his owners, Muriel and Eustace Bagge, an elderly, married farming couple in the "Middle of...
. These shows were designed to appeal to adults as well as children, and thus incorporated plenty of "adult humor", such as pop-culture references and veiled sexual innuendos.
Great American wanted out of the entertainment business, and Hanna-Barbera was sold to the Turner Broadcasting System
Turner Broadcasting System
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. is the Time Warner subsidiary managing the collection of cable networks and properties started and acquired by Robert Edward "Ted" Turner starting in the mid-1970s. The company has its headquarters in the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia. TBS, Inc...
in 1991. Ted Turner had expressed that he mainly wanted ownership of the studio's back catalog; its launch of Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
on October 1, 1992 provided a new audience for Hanna-Barbera cartoons, both old and new. Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...
acquired Turner in 1996, and thus inherited the rights to all of Hanna-Barbera's creative properties. This allowed Cartoon Network to begin airing classic Looney Tunes shorts as well. Cartoon Network's success with original programming lead them to move the reruns of old Hanna-Barbera and Looney Tunes cartoons to their spin-off channel Boomerang.
In 1997, Fred Seibert left Hanna-Barbera to found his own studio
Frederator Studios
Frederator Studios is an independent American production company founded by Fred Seibert in 1997, with its first series launching in 1998. The studio focuses primarily on artists who write their own shorts, series, and movies...
. In 1998, Hanna-Barbera moved to the same building as Warner Bros. Animation; the use of the Hanna-Barbera name ceased with William Hanna's death in 2001. Cartoon Network Studios
Cartoon Network Studios
Cartoon Network Studios is an American animation studio. A subsidiary of the Turner Broadcasting System , Cartoon Network Studios focuses on producing and developing animated programs only for and related to Cartoon Network...
now handles all original animation for the network.
Nickelodeon
In 1991, NickelodeonNickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
introduced The Ren and Stimpy Show. Ren and Stimpy was a wild and off-beat series that violated all the restrictions of Saturday morning cartoons, instead favoring the outrageous style of the shorts from the Golden Age period. The series' creator, John Kricfalusi
John Kricfalusi
Michael John Kricfalusi , better known as John K., is a Canadian animator. He is creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show, its adults-only spin-off Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon", The Ripping Friends animated series, and Weekend Pussy Hunt, which was billed as "the world's first interactive web-based...
—a Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
protege—was largely influenced by the classic works of Bob Clampett
Bob Clampett
Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...
. In spite of the show's popularity, the show was beset with production delays and censorship battles with Nickelodeon, which fired Kricfalusi in 1992. The show continued under the production of the network-owned Games Animation company until 1996, though many animators departed with Kricfalusi. TNN
Spike TV
Spike is an American cable television channel. It launched on March 7, 1983 as The Nashville Network , a joint venture of WSM, Inc...
revived the show in a more risqué form in 2003, with Kricfalusi receiving more creative freedom, but it only lasted ten episodes.
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
also gave birth to hit shows such as Doug
Doug
Doug is an American animated sitcom created by Jim Jinkins and co-produced by his studio, Jumbo Pictures . Doug centers on the surreal and imaginative exploits of its title character, Douglas "Doug" Funnie, who experiences common predicaments while attending middle school. The series lampoons...
, Rugrats
Rugrats
Rugrats is an American animated television series created by Arlene Klasky, Gábor Csupó, and Paul Germain for Nickelodeon. The series premiered on August 11, 1991, and aired its last episode on June 8, 2004....
, Rocko's Modern Life
Rocko's Modern Life
Rocko's Modern Life is an animated series created by Joe Murray. The show aired for four seasons between 1993 and 1996 on Nickelodeon. Rocko's Modern Life is based around the surreal, parodic adventures of an anthropomorphic wallaby named Rocko, and his life in the city of O-Town...
, Hey Arnold!
Hey Arnold!
Hey Arnold! is an American animated television series created by Craig Bartlett for Nickelodeon. The show's premise focuses on a fourth grader named Arnold who lives with his grandparents. Episodes center on his experiences navigating big city life while dealing with the problems he and his friends...
, The Angry Beavers
The Angry Beavers
The Angry Beavers is an American animated television series created by Mitch Schauer for the Nickelodeon channel. The series revolves around Daggett and Norbert Beaver, two young beaver brothers who have left their home to become bachelors in the forest near Wayouttatown, Oregon. The show premiered...
, CatDog
CatDog
CatDog is an American animated television series which premiered on April 4, 1998, and ended with an unaired episode on September 22, 2004. The series was created for Nickelodeon by Peter Hannan. It was also shown as a sneak peek in theaters with The Rugrats Movie...
, SpongeBob SquarePants
SpongeBob SquarePants
SpongeBob SquarePants is an American animated television series, created by marine biologist and animator Stephen Hillenburg. Much of the series centers on the exploits and adventures of the title character and his various friends in the underwater city of "Bikini Bottom"...
, and The Fairly OddParents
The Fairly OddParents
The Fairly OddParents is an American-Canadian animated television series created by Butch Hartman about the adventures of Timmy Turner, who is granted fairy godparents named Cosmo and Wanda. The series started out as cartoon segments that ran from September 4, 1998 to March 23, 2001 on Oh Yeah!...
. Many of these shows spawned successful theatrical films as well.
Other cable networks
The Disney ChannelDisney Channel
Disney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...
switched from pay-cable to basic cable in the late 1990s, and launched a number of successful animated shows such as The Proud Family
The Proud Family
The Proud Family is an American animated television series that premiered on Disney Channel from September 15, 2001 to August 19, 2005.-Production:...
and Kim Possible
Kim Possible
Kim Possible is an American animated television series about a teenage crime fighter who has the task of dealing with worldwide, family, and school issues every day. The show is action-oriented, but also has a light-hearted atmosphere and often lampoons the conventions and clichés of the...
. Around the same time, it launched Toon Disney
Toon Disney
Toon Disney was an American cable television channel owned by The Walt Disney Company. A spinoff of Disney Channel, it mostly aired children's animated series and some live action programming. Its format had similarities to those of Cartoon Network and Nicktoons...
, a channel specifically intended for animation (which has since been replaced by Disney XD).
On cable TV
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
, Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
, the Disney Channel
Disney Channel
Disney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...
, and the Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (United States)
Cartoon Network is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting which primarily airs animated programming. The channel was launched on October 1, 1992 after Turner purchased the animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1991...
grew to a point where they were competitive with the broadcast networks.
Broadcast networks
As the 1990s began, the "Big Three" networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) were no longer a three-way oligopolyOligopoly
An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers . The word is derived, by analogy with "monopoly", from the Greek ὀλίγοι "few" + πόλειν "to sell". Because there are few sellers, each oligopolist is likely to be aware of the actions of the others...
. The fledgling Fox network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
launched their Fox Kids
Fox Kids
Fox Kids was the Fox Broadcasting Company's American children's programming division and brand name from September 8, 1990 until September 7, 2002. It was owned by Fox Television Entertainment airing programming on Monday–Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings.Depending on the show, the...
programming block on weekdays and Saturdays in 1990, while The WB
Kids' WB
Kids' WB! was Warner Bros. American childrens programing division brand for The WB Television Network. In September 2006, the block moved to The CW Television Network. The CW is the result of The WB's merger with UPN in 2006...
joined the competition with a kid's programming block shortly after the network's 1995 launch.
When NBC compared the success of the live-action youth sitcom Saved by the Bell
Saved by the Bell
Saved by the Bell is an American television sitcom that aired between 1989 and 1993. The series is a retooled version of the 1988 series Good Morning, Miss Bliss, which was itself later folded into the history of Saved by the Bell...
to the paucity of their animated hits, they gave up on cartoons in 1992, instead concentrating on live-action teenage shows with their Saturday-morning TNBC block. ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
was purchased by Disney in 1995, and Disney transformed ABC's Saturday schedule into a series of Disney-produced animated cartoons collectively named One Saturday Morning. CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
was simply never able to come up with any new hits once the shows that anchored its late 1980s/early 1990s Saturday morning lineup—Muppet Babies
Muppet Babies
Jim Henson's Muppet Babies is an American animated television series that aired from September 15, 1984 to November 2, 1991 on CBS. The show portrayed childhood versions of the Muppets living together in a large nursery in the care of a human woman called Nanny...
, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a fictional team of four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu and named after four Renaissance artists...
, Garfield and Friends
Garfield and Friends
Garfield and Friends is an American animated television series based on the comic strip Garfield by Jim Davis. The show was produced by Film Roman, in association with United Feature Syndicate and Paws, Inc., and ran on CBS Saturday mornings from September 17, 1988 to December 10, 1994, with...
, etc.—ran their respective courses. When CBS was purchased by Viacom
Viacom (1971–2005)
Viacom , stylized as VIACOM in its current logo, was an American media conglomerate. It was the owner of CBS, Nickelodeon & MTV, among others. Effective December 31, 2005, this corporate entity changed its name to CBS Corporation...
, which also owned Nickelodeon, Viacom simply repurposed much of the Nick Jr. lineup—in addition to adding a Saturday edition of the CBS morning-news program The Early Show
The Early Show
The Early Show is an American television morning news talk show broadcast by CBS from New York City. The program airs live from 7 to 9 a.m. Eastern Time Monday through Friday; most affiliates in the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones air the show on tape-delay from 7 to 9 a.m. local time. ...
.
As a result of years of activism by Action for Children's Television
Action for Children's Television
Action for Children's Television was founded by Peggy Charren and Judy Chalfen in Newton, Massachusetts in 1968 as a grassroots organization dedicated to improving the quality of television programming offered to children...
and others against shows they believed blurred the line between entertainment and advertising, the Children's Television Act
Children's Television Act
The Children's Television Act was enacted in 1990 in the United States to enhance television's potential to teach the nation's children valuable information and skills. The Act requires each full-service television station that offers children's television programming in the U.S...
was passed in 1990. It began to be strictly enforced in 1996. The Federal Communications Commission
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
began requiring three hours a week of educational and informational program intended explicitly for children, at times when children were awake. Since this required three hours to be "off limits" to programs aimed at the general public, the networks naturally chose to air them on Saturday morning, when children were already watching. As a result, almost every Saturday-morning network show is required to contain some educational content. Fox and The WB worked around this problem by airing short one-hour weekday children's blocks instead of morning news shows, but those weekday blocks no longer exist (with the notable exception of PBS, which continues to have large weekday children's programming blocks as of 2010). Nonetheless, there were still a few toy-based children's programs in the 1990s, particularly Power Rangers
Power Rangers
Power Rangers is a long-running American entertainment and merchandising franchise built around a live action children's television series featuring teams of costumed heroes...
and Pokémon
Pokémon (anime)
, abbreviated from , is a children's TV anime series, which has since been adapted for the North and South American, Australian and European television markets...
.
Cable networks were not subject to these—or most other—FCC requirements, which allowed their series to have more leeway with content than network shows.
Animation for adults
The 1990s saw the beginnings of a new wave of animated series targeted primarily to adults, after a lack of such a focus for over a decade.The Simpsons and Fox
In 1987, "The Simpsons", an animated short cartoon segment of The Tracey Ullman ShowThe Tracey Ullman Show
The Tracey Ullman Show was an American television variety show, hosted by British comedian and onetime pop singer Tracey Ullman. It debuted on April 5, 1987 as the Fox network's second primetime series after Married... with Children, and ran until May 26, 1990. The show blended sketch comedy shorts...
, debuted. Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
's creation gained its own half-hour series
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
in 1989, the first prime-time animated series since The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
. Although 70 percent of the first episode's
Some Enchanted Evening (The Simpsons)
"Some Enchanted Evening" is the thirteenth, final aired, and first produced episode of The Simpsons first season and originally aired on the Fox network on May 13, 1990. Although it was the first episode produced, it aired as the season finale due to significant animation problems. The episode...
animation had to be redone, pushing the series premiere back three months, it became one of the first major hit series for the fledgling Fox network
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
. The Simpsons caused a sensation, entering popular culture and gaining wide acclaim for its satirical handling of American culture, families, society as a whole, and the human condition.
The show has won dozens of awards, including 24 Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s, 26 Annie Award
Annie Award
The Annie Awards have been presented by the Los Angeles, California branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood since 1972...
s and a Peabody Award
Peabody Award
The George Foster Peabody Awards recognize distinguished and meritorious public service by radio and television stations, networks, producing organizations and individuals. In 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters formed a committee to recognize outstanding achievement in radio broadcasting...
. Time
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
magazine's December 31, 1999 issue named it the 20th century's best television series. A film version
The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the animated television series The Simpsons. The film was directed by David Silverman, and stars the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tress...
grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide. On February 26, 2009, Fox renewed The Simpsons for an additional two years, "...which will secure its place as TV's longest-running prime-time series." Its 21st season began on September 27, 2009, breaking the 20-season record it once shared with Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....
.
The success of The Simpsons led Fox to develop other animated series aimed at adults, including King of the Hill
King of the Hill
King of the Hill is an American animated dramedy series created by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, that ran from January 12, 1997, to May 6, 2010, on Fox network. It centers on the Hills, a working-class Methodist family in the fictional small town of Arlen, Texas...
(created by Mike Judge
Mike Judge
Michael Craig Judge is an American animator, film director, writer and voice actor, best known as the creator and star of the animated television series Beavis and Butt-head , King of the Hill , and The Goode Family .He also wrote, directed and in some instances produced the films Beavis and...
), Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
(also by Groening), Family Guy
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
(created by Seth MacFarlane
Seth MacFarlane
Seth Woodbury MacFarlane is an American animator, writer, comedian, producer, actor, singer, voice actor, and director best known for creating the animated sitcoms Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show, for which he also voices many of the shows' various characters.A native of Kent,...
), American Dad!
American Dad!
American Dad! is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane and owned by Underdog Productions and Fuzzy Door Productions. It is produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television...
(also by MacFarlane) and The Cleveland Show
The Cleveland Show
The Cleveland Show is an American animated television series that premiered on September 27, 2009, as a part of the "Animation Domination" lineup on Fox in the United States...
(also by MacFarlane). King of the Hill was an instant success, running 13 seasons. Both Futurama and Family Guy were cancelled by the network; after strong DVD sales and ratings in re-runs, both returned to the air—Family Guy on Fox, and Futurama on Comedy Central.
Spike and Mike
Alongside the mainstream revival of animation in the 1990s, a stranger and more experimental movementIndependent animation
Independent animation is a term used to describe animated short cartoons and feature films produced outside the professional Hollywood animation industry.- Early independent animation :The history of animation is as old as the film industry itself...
occurred. In 1989, a festival of animation shorts, organized by Craig "Spike" Decker and Mike Gribble (known as "Spike & Mike") and originally based in San Diego, began showcasing a collection of short subject animated films. Known as the Classic Festival of Animation, it played in theatrical and non-theatrical venues across the country.
The collections were largely made up of Oscar-nominated shorts, student work from the California Institute of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...
, and experimental work funded by the National Film Board of Canada
National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
. Early festivals included work by John Lasseter
John Lasseter
John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, director and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering....
, Nick Park
Nick Park
Nicholas Wulstan "Nick" Park, CBE is an English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep....
, Mike Judge
Mike Judge
Michael Craig Judge is an American animator, film director, writer and voice actor, best known as the creator and star of the animated television series Beavis and Butt-head , King of the Hill , and The Goode Family .He also wrote, directed and in some instances produced the films Beavis and...
, and Craig McCracken
Craig McCracken
Craig McCracken is an American animator and creator of The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.-Biography:...
. Judge's piece, Frog Baseball, marked the first appearance of his dimwitted trademark characters Beavis and Butt-head
Beavis and Butt-Head
Beavis and Butt-head is an American animated television series created by Mike Judge. The series originated from Frog Baseball, a 1992 short film by Judge. After seeing the short, MTV signed Judge to develop the concept. Beavis and Butt-head originally aired from March 8, 1993 to November 28, 1997...
, while McCracken's short The Whoopass Girls in A Sticky Situation featured the introduction of the trio of little girl superheroes that would later gain popularity under their new moniker The Powerpuff Girls
The Powerpuff Girls
The Powerpuff Girls is an American animated television series created by animator Craig McCracken and produced by Hanna-Barbera for Cartoon Network...
.
The festival gradually turned into a program of films called Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, an underground movement for adult humor and subject matter.
Cartoon Network & Adult Swim
In 1994, the U.S. cable television network Cartoon NetworkCartoon Network (United States)
Cartoon Network is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting which primarily airs animated programming. The channel was launched on October 1, 1992 after Turner purchased the animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1991...
approved a new series entitled Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. In a particularly postmodern twist, this show featured live-action celebrity interviews mixed with animation from the original Space Ghost
Space Ghost
Space Ghost is a fictional superhero created by Hanna-Barbera Productions and designed by Alex Toth for CBS in the 1960s. In his original incarnation, he was a superhero who, with his sidekick teen helpers Jan, Jace, and Blip the monkey, fought supervillains in outer space...
cartoon. It was the beginning of the now common practice of using old Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters for new edgier productions, such as the surrealistic Sealab 2021
Sealab 2021
Sealab 2021 is an American animated television series. It was shown on Cartoon Network's adult-oriented programming block, Adult Swim. It premiered on November 23, 2000 and the final episode aired on April 25, 2005...
, based on the short-lived early 1970s environmentally themed cartoon Sealab 2020
Sealab 2020
Sealab 2020 is an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera. The series is about the crew of an underwater research base and has an environmental theme. The series premiered on the television network NBC on September 9, 1972...
. Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law is an American animated television series comedy created by Williams Street and produced by Cartoon Network Studios that aired on Cartoon Network during its Adult Swim late night programming block. The series' pilot first aired in 2000, and later became a series in...
was about a lackluster superhero, Birdman—originally the star of Birdman and the Galaxy Trio
Birdman and the Galaxy Trio
Birdman and the Galaxy Trio is an animated science fiction TV series created by Alex Toth and produced by Hanna-Barbera. It debuted on NBC on September 9, 1967, and ran on Saturday mornings until September 6, 1969...
—who has become a lawyer. His clientele, as well as most of the other characters on the show, are made up entirely of old Hanna-Barbera characters.
Adult Swim
Adult Swim
Adult Swim is an adult-oriented Cable network that shares channel space with Cartoon Network from 9:00 pm until 6:00 am ET/PT in the United States, and broadcasts in countries such as Australia and New Zealand...
, a scheduling block of adult-oriented cartoons appearing on Cartoon Network beginning after primetime, premiered in 2001. Originally limited to Sunday nights, as of January 3, 2011 Adult Swim now remains on the air every night until 6:00 a.m. Eastern time. Animated series produced exclusively for Adult Swim include The Brak Show
The Brak Show
The Brak Show is an animated television series that aired on Cartoon Network's late night programming block, Adult Swim. The Brak Show is a spin-off of the animated television series, Space Ghost Coast to Coast, and featured recurring characters from Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Cartoon Planet...
, Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Aqua Teen Hunger Force
Aqua Teen Hunger Force , retitled Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1 in 2011, is an American animated television series on Cartoon Network late night programing block, Adult Swim, as well as Teletoon's Teletoon at Night block and later G4 Canada's ADd block in Canada...
, Sealab 2021
Sealab 2021
Sealab 2021 is an American animated television series. It was shown on Cartoon Network's adult-oriented programming block, Adult Swim. It premiered on November 23, 2000 and the final episode aired on April 25, 2005...
, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, The Venture Bros.
The Venture Bros.
The Venture Bros. is an American animated television series that premiered on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on February 16, 2003. The series mixes action and comedy together while it chronicles the adventures of the Venture family: well-meaning but incompetent teenagers Hank and Dean Venture; their...
, Perfect Hair Forever
Perfect Hair Forever
Perfect Hair Forever is an American comedy animated television series which is largely a parody of anime. It was created and produced by Williams Street, and aired on Adult Swim and The Detour in the US and Canada respectively...
, Stroker and Hoop
Stroker and Hoop
Stroker and Hoop is an American Flash animated television series on Cartoon Network's late night programming block, Adult Swim. The series is a parody of buddy cop films and television series such as Starsky and Hutch, and features the voices of Jon Glaser as Stroker and Timothy "Speed" Levitch as...
, Tom Goes to the Mayor
Tom Goes to the Mayor
Tom Goes to the Mayor is an American animated television series created by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim for Cartoon Network's late night programming block, Adult Swim. It premiered on November 14, 2004 and ended on September 25, 2006, with a total of thirty episodes.-History:Tom Goes to the...
, Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...
, and Metalocalypse
Metalocalypse
Metalocalypse is an American animated television series, created by Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha, which premiered on August 6, 2006 on Adult Swim...
. In addition to comedy cartoons, Adult Swim also runs popular anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
series such as Cowboy Bebop
Cowboy Bebop
is a critically acclaimed and award-winning 1998 Japanese anime series directed by Shinichirō Watanabe, written by Keiko Nobumoto, and produced by Sunrise. Its 26 episodes comprise a complete storyline: set in 2071, the series follows the adventures, misadventures and tragedies of five bounty...
, Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell
is a Japanese multimedia franchise composed of manga, animated films, anime series, video games and novels. It focuses on the activities of the counter-terrorist organization Public Security Section 9 in a futuristic, cyberpunk Japan ....
, Eureka Seven
Eureka Seven
Eureka Seven, known in Japan as , is a mecha anime TV series by Bones. Eureka Seven tells the story of Renton Thurston and the outlaw group Gekkostate, his relationship with the enigmatic mecha pilot Eureka, and the mystery of the Coralians....
, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood
Fullmetal Alchemist
, is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hiromu Arakawa. The world of Fullmetal Alchemist is styled after the European Industrial Revolution...
, Bleach
Bleach (manga)
is a Japanese shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Noriaki "Tite" Kubo. Bleach follows the adventures of Ichigo Kurosaki after he obtains the powers of a —a death personification similar to the Grim Reaper—from another Soul Reaper, Rukia Kuchiki...
, and InuYasha
InuYasha
, also known as , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Rumiko Takahashi. It premiered in Weekly Shōnen Sunday on November 13, 1996 and concluded on June 18, 2008...
.
Other cartoons for adults
Other TV networks also experimented with adult-oriented animation. MTVMTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
produced several successful animated series especially for its young adult audience, including Liquid Television
Liquid Television
Liquid Television is an Emmy Award–winning 1990s animation showcase that appeared on MTV. The first season of Liquid Television also aired on BBC Two in co-production with MTV. Ultimately, MTV commissioned three seasons of the show, which was produced by Colossal Pictures...
, The Brothers Grunt
The Brothers Grunt
The Brothers Grunt is an animated TV series that aired from August 15, 1994 to February 20, 1995 on MTV. The series was created by Danny Antonucci .-Premise:...
, Æon Flux
Æon Flux
Æon Flux was originally an avant-garde science fiction animated television series that aired on MTV in various forms throughout the 1990s, with film, comic book, and video game adaptations following thereafter. It premiered in 1991 on MTV's Liquid Television experimental animation show as a...
, Beavis and Butt-head
Beavis and Butt-Head
Beavis and Butt-head is an American animated television series created by Mike Judge. The series originated from Frog Baseball, a 1992 short film by Judge. After seeing the short, MTV signed Judge to develop the concept. Beavis and Butt-head originally aired from March 8, 1993 to November 28, 1997...
(and its spin-off Daria
Daria
Daria is an American animated television series produced by Paramount Television, and created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn for MTV. The series focuses on Daria Morgendorffer, a smart, acerbic, and somewhat misanthropic teenage girl who observes the world around her...
), and Celebrity Deathmatch
Celebrity Deathmatch
Celebrity Deathmatch is a claymation television show that depicts celebrities against each other in a wrestling ring, almost always ending in the loser's gruesome death. It was known for its excessive amount of blood used in every match and exaggerated physical injuries...
. USA Network
USA Network
USA Network is an American cable television channel launched in 1971. Once a minor player in basic cable, the network has steadily gained popularity because of breakout hits like Monk, Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, Covert Affairs, White Collar, Monday Night RAW, Suits, and reruns of the various...
's Duckman
Duckman
Duckman: Private Dick/Family Man is an American animated sitcom that aired from 1994–1997, created by Everett Peck and developed by Peck. The sitcom is based on characters created by Peck in his Dark Horse comic...
, starring the voice of Jason Alexander
Jason Alexander
Jay Scott Greenspan , better known by his professional name of Jason Alexander, is an American actor, writer, comedian, television director, producer, and singer. He is best known for his role as George Costanza on the television series Seinfeld, appearing in the sitcom from 1989 to 1998...
, found a cult following.
Another successful adult-oriented animated series was Comedy Central's South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
, which saw its beginnings in 1995 with the short cartoon The Spirit of Christmas
The Spirit of Christmas (short film)
The Spirit of Christmas is the name of two different animated short films made by Trey Parker and Matt Stone. They are notable for being precursors to the animated series South Park. To differentiate the two, they are often referred to as Jesus vs. Frosty and Jesus vs. Santa .- Jesus vs. Frosty...
. Like The Simpsons, Beavis and Butt-head and South Park were given the big screen treatment as Beavis and Butt-head Do America
Beavis and Butt-head Do America
Beavis and Butt-head Do America is a 1996 animated feature film, based on the TV series, Beavis and Butt-Head. It was produced by Paramount Pictures in association with Geffen Pictures and MTV Films, and co-written and directed by creator Mike Judge. The film grossed $20.11 million in its opening...
and South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.
The rise of computer animation
The 1990s saw exponential growthExponential growth
Exponential growth occurs when the growth rate of a mathematical function is proportional to the function's current value...
in the use of computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
to enhance both animated sequences and live-action special effects, allowing elaborate computer-animated sequences to dominate both. This new form of animation soon dominated Hollywood special effects; the films Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron and written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr.. It stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, and Edward Furlong...
and Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park (film)
Jurassic Park is a 1993 American science fiction adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. It stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Martin Ferrero, and Bob Peck...
included Oscar-winning special effects sequences which made extensive use of CGI. After decades of existing as related-but-separate industries, the barrier between "animation" and "special effects" was shattered by the popularization of computerized special effects—to the point where computer enhancement of Hollywood feature films became second-nature and often went unnoticed. The Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
-winning Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump
Forrest Gump is a 1994 American epic comedy-drama romance film based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom. The film was directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright and Gary Sinise...
(1994) depended heavily on computerized special effects to create the illusion of Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
shaking hands with Presidents John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
, and to make Gary Sinise
Gary Sinise
Gary Alan Sinise is an American actor, film director and musician. During his career, Sinise has won various awards including an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1992, Sinise directed, and played the role of George Milton in the successful film adaptation of...
convincingly appear to be a double amputee, winning a special-effects Oscar. The film Titanic
Titanic (1997 film)
Titanic is a 1997 American epic romance and disaster film directed, written, co-produced, and co-edited by James Cameron. A fictionalized account of the sinking of the RMS Titanic, it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, Kate Winslet as Rose DeWitt Bukater and Billy Zane as Rose's fiancé, Cal...
used computer effects in nearly every scene of its three-hour running time; one of the film's 11 Oscars was for special effects.
While Disney had made the film Tron
Tron
-Film:*Tron , a franchise that began in 1982 with the Walt Disney Pictures film Tron** Tron , a 1982 science fiction film by Disney, starring Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan, Dan Shor and David Warner...
—which extensively mixed live action, traditional animation, and CGI—in 1982, and introduced the CAPS
Computer Animation Production System
The Computer Animation Production System is a proprietary collection of software programs, scanning camera systems, servers, networked computer workstations, and custom desks developed by The Walt Disney Company together with Pixar in the late-1980s...
system to enhance traditional animation in 1990's The Rescuers Down Under
The Rescuers Down Under
The Rescuers Down Under is a 1990 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on November 16, 1990...
, a completely computer-animated feature film had yet to be made. In 1995, Disney partnered with Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
to produce Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
, the first feature film made entirely using CGI. The film's success was so great that other studios looked into producing their own CGI
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
films.
Computer animation also made inroads into television. The Saturday morning animated series ReBoot
ReBoot
ReBoot is a Canadian CGI-animated action-adventure cartoon series that originally aired from 1994 to 2001. It was produced by Vancouver-based production company Mainframe Entertainment, Alliance Communications, BLT Productions and created by Gavin Blair, Ian Pearson, Phil Mitchell and John Grace,...
won a large cult following among adults; it was the first of a number of CGI-generated animated series, including Beast Wars
Beast Wars
Transformers: Beast Wars is a Transformers toyline released by Hasbro between 1995 and 2000, and a Daytime Emmy Award winning full-CG animated television series spawned by it that debuted in 1996...
, War Planets, and Roughnecks. The quality of the computer animation improved considerably with each successive series. Many live-action TV series (especially science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
TV series such as Babylon 5
Babylon 5
Babylon 5 is an American science fiction television series created, produced and largely written by J. Michael Straczynski. The show centers on a space station named Babylon 5: a focal point for politics, diplomacy, and conflict during the years 2257–2262...
) invested heavily in CGI production, creating a heretofore-unavailable level of special effects for a relatively low price.
Pixar
The most popular and successful competitor in the CGI race turned out to be PixarPixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
. Founded by George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
' Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
in 1979 as a special-effects team, it was sold to Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
co-founder Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
in 1986 due to Lucas's financial problems related to the failure of Howard the Duck
Howard the Duck (film)
Howard the Duck is a 1986 American science fiction comedy film directed by Willard Huyck and produced by George Lucas. It is loosely based on the Marvel comic book of the same name, created by Steve Gerber and quoting scripts by Bill Mantlo, the film focuses on Howard, an alien from a planet...
. At that time, the company primarily developed computer animation hardware, but had made a name for itself by producing such acclaimed CGI short films as Tin Toy
Tin Toy
Tin Toy is a 1988 short film using computer animation. It was directed by John Lasseter and produced by Pixar. It was the first testing of PhotoRealistic RenderMan...
, which won an Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
.
When the company saw financial problems, it branched in to TV-commercial production; it also made a deal with the Walt Disney Company to produce feature films. The first of these films, 1995's Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
, was a smash hit, giving way to the success of A Bug's Life
A Bug's Life
A Bug's Life is a 1998 American computer animated adventure comedy film produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures in the United States on November 25, 1998. A Bug's Life was the second Disney·Pixar feature film after Toy Story, and the third American computer-animated film after Toy...
and Toy Story 2
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 2 is a 1999 American computer animated film directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Lee Unkrich and Ash Brannon. It is the sequel to the 1995 film Toy Story, released by Walt Disney Pictures and the third film to be produced by Pixar...
.
Pixar's string of critical and box-office successes continued with Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo is a 2003 American comi-drama animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin who, along with a regal tang called Dory , searches for his abducted son Nemo...
, The Incredibles
The Incredibles
The Incredibles is a 2004 American computer-animated action-comedy superhero film about a family of superheroes who are forced to hide their powers. It was written and directed by Brad Bird, a former director and executive consultant of The Simpsons, and was produced by Pixar and distributed by...
, Cars, Ratatouille
Ratatouille
Ratatouille is a traditional French Provençal stewed vegetable dish, originating in Nice. The full name of the dish is ratatouille niçoise.- Origin :...
, WALL-E
WALL-E
WALL-E, promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E, is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. The story follows a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future...
, Up
Up (2009 film)
Up is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and presented in Disney Digital 3-D. The film premiered on May 29, 2009 in North America and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film...
and Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3
Toy Story 3 is a 2010 American 3D computer-animated comedy-adventure film, and the third installment in the Toy Story series. It was produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Lee Unkrich. The film was released worldwide from June through October in Disney Digital...
all receiving rave reviews, earning huge profits, winning awards, and overshadowing Disney's in-house offerings. Disney produced a CGI/live action feature film of its own without Pixar (Dinosaur
Dinosaur (film)
Dinosaur is a 2000 American computer-animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on May 19, 2000, and is the 39th animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
), but the film received a mixed reaction, even though it was a financial success. During the later years of Michael Eisner's management, friction between Disney and Pixar grew to a point that Pixar considered finding another partner when they could not reach an agreement over profit sharing. When Eisner stepped down in 2005, his replacement, Robert Iger
Robert Iger
Robert A. "Bob" Iger is the president and chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company. He was named president of Disney in 2000, and later succeeded Michael Eisner as chief executive in 2005, after a successful effort by Roy E. Disney to shake-up the management of the company...
, bought Pixar in a $7.4 billion all-stock deal ($ in today's dollars) that turned Steve Jobs into Disney's largest individual shareholder. Following the merger, Pixar's John Lasseter
John Lasseter
John Alan Lasseter is an American animator, director and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is also currently the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering....
was placed in charge of greenlighting all new animated films for the combined company under his new role of Chief Creative Officer.
Dreamworks
When Jeffrey KatzenbergJeffrey Katzenberg
Jeffrey Katzenberg is an American film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation. He is perhaps most famous for his period as chairman of The Walt Disney Company's film division, and for producing DreamWorks animated films such as Shrek, Antz, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Chicken...
left Disney to become a co-partner of Steven Spielberg and David Geffen
David Geffen
David Geffen is an American record executive, film producer, theatrical producer and philanthropist. Geffen is noted for creating Asylum Records in 1970, Geffen Records in 1980, and DGC Records in 1990...
in the new studio Dreamworks
DreamWorks
DreamWorks Pictures, also known as DreamWorks, LLC, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming...
, the studio naturally became interested in animation. Its first film, Antz
Antz
Antz is a 1998 American computer animated action adventure film produced by DreamWorks Animation. It features the voices of well-known actors such as Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Gene Hackman, Christopher Walken, and Danny Glover as...
, did not do as well as the Disney-Pixar releases. However, DreamWorks succeeded in its partnership with the British stop motion animation studio Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, or simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit...
with Chicken Run
Chicken Run
Chicken Run is a 2000 British stop-motion animation film made by the Aardman Animations studios, the production studio of the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit films...
in 2000, and later the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2006.
Furthermore, DreamWorks finally had their own success in 2001 with the computer animated feature film Shrek
Shrek
Shrek is a 2001 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. Loosely based on William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book Shrek!...
, a gigantic box-office hit that overpowered Disney's summer release for that year, Atlantis
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a 2001 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Written by Tab Murphy, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, and produced by Don Hahn, it is the first science fiction film in the Disney animated features canon and the 41st overall. The film...
. Shrek established Dreamworks as Disney's first major competitor in feature-film animation. Dreamworks' commercial success continued with three Shrek sequels, Shark Tale
Shark Tale
Shark Tale is a 2004 American computer-animated comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation. In the story, a young fish named Oscar falsely claims to have killed the son of a shark mob boss to win favour with the mob boss' enemies and advance his own community standing...
, Madagascar
Madagascar (film series)
Madagascar is an animated film series produced by DreamWorks Animation. Voices of Ben Stiller, Jada Pinkett Smith, Chris Rock and David Schwimmer are featured in the films...
, Over the Hedge
Over the Hedge (film)
Over the Hedge is a 2006 computer animated family action comedy film based on the characters from United Media comic strip of the same name. Directed by Tim Johnson and Karey Kirkpatrick, and produced by Bonnie Arnold, it was released in the United States on May 19, 2006.The film was produced by...
, Bee Movie
Bee Movie
Bee Movie is a 2007 computer animated family comedy film starring Jerry Seinfeld, Renée Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, Megan Mullally, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Kathy Bates, and Patrick Warburton. Produced by DreamWorks Animation, it is directed by Simon J...
, Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda is a 2008 American computer-animated action comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures...
, Monsters vs. Aliens
Monsters vs. Aliens
Monsters vs. Aliens is a 2009 American computer-animated 3-D science fiction film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures...
, and How to Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon (film)
How to Train Your Dragon is a 2010 3D computer-animated action fantasy film by DreamWorks Animation loosely based on the 2003 book of the same name. The film stars the voices of Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wiig, and Christopher...
. DreamWorks Animation eventually became a separate company from its parent.
Independents and others
Other studios attempted to get into the CGI game. After ending its relationship with Don Bluth, 20th Century Fox20th Century Fox
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation — also known as 20th Century Fox, or simply 20th or Fox — is one of the six major American film studios...
released a hugely successful CGI-animated feature in early 2002 entitled Ice Age
Ice Age (film)
Ice Age is a 2002 American computer-animated film created by Blue Sky Studios and released by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Carlos Saldanha and Chris Wedge from a story by Michael J. Wilson. The story follows three Paleolithical mammals attempting to return a lost human baby to its parents...
. Also in 2002, Paramount
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
offered Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, TWC
The Weinstein Company
The Weinstein Company is an American film studio founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein in 2005 after the brothers left the then-Disney-owned Miramax Films, which they had co-founded in 1979...
offered Hoodwinked!, and Columbia produced Open Season
Open Season
Open Season may refer to:* Open season , a hunting term* An annual enrollment period- Literature :* Open Season , a comic book series by Jim Bricker* Open Season , a 1992 novel in The Hardy Boys series, #59...
. Warner Brothers had a major success in 2006 with the Oscar winning feature film, Happy Feet, while Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
attempted several times to become a viable participant in the market, finally achieving the goal in 2010 with Despicable Me
Despicable Me
Despicable Me is a 2010 American computer-animated 3D comedy film from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment that was released on July 9, 2010 in the United States. The film features the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Russell Brand, Julie Andrews, Will Arnett, Kristen Wiig, and...
.
In spite of all its success, computer animation still relies on cartoony and stylized characters. 2001 saw the first attempt to create a fully animated world using photorealistic human actors in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a 2001 Japanese-American computer animated science fiction film directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series of role-playing video games. It was the first photorealistic computer animated feature film and also holds the record for the most...
, which met with moderate critical success but did not do well at the box office.
The use of CGI special effects in live-action film increased to the point where George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
considered his 2002 film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones is a 2002 American epic space opera film directed by George Lucas and written by Lucas and Jonathan Hales. It is the fifth film to be released in the Star Wars saga and the second in terms of the series' internal chronology...
to be primarily an animated film that used real-life actors. A growing number of family-oriented films began to use entirely computer-generated characters that interacted on the screen with live-action counterparts, such as Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace is a 1999 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It is the fourth film to be released in the Star Wars saga, as the first of a three-part prequel to the original Star Wars trilogy, as well as the first film in the saga in terms...
, Gollum
Gollum
Gollum is a fictional character from J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. He was introduced in the author's fantasy novel The Hobbit, and became an important supporting character in its sequel, The Lord of the Rings....
in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and the title character of Hulk
Hulk (film)
Hulk is a 2003 American superhero film based on the fictional Marvel Comics character of the same name. Ang Lee directed the film, which stars Eric Bana as Dr. Bruce Banner, as well as Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott, Josh Lucas, and Nick Nolte...
. While computer generated characters have become acceptable to moviegoers, there have yet to be any fully animated films featuring virtual human actors, or "synthespians".
Rise of Internet and Flash animation
The late 1990s saw the rise of Flash animation—animated films created using the Adobe FlashAdobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
animation software—produced in the U.S. and elsewhere, and distributed through the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. The term "Flash animation" refers not only to the file format, but to a certain kind of movement and visual style that is seen in many circles as simplistic or unpolished. There are dozens of Flash-animated television series, countless more Flash animated television commercials, and award-winning online shorts in circulation.
Some popular Flash animated cartoons include Joe Cartoons, Weebl and Bob
Weebl and Bob
The Everyday Happenings of Weebl is a Flash cartoon series created by Jonti Picking and co-scripted by Chris Vick .-Main summary:...
, Happy Tree Friends
Happy Tree Friends
Happy Tree Friends is an American Flash cartoon and made by Mondo Mini Shows, created and developed by Aubrey Ankrum Rhode Montijo Kenn Navarro and Warren Graff. The show has become a popular Internet phenomenon and it's since debut and has also won a cult following.As indicated on the official...
, Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner is a Flash animated Internet cartoon. It mixes surreal humor with references to retro pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music.The cartoons are nominally centered on the title character, Homestar Runner...
, the Brackenwood
Brackenwood
Brackenwood is a series created by Adam Phillips, webmaster of the website. It currently includes a continuing series of short Flash animations about the inhabitants of a small fictional forest planet called Brackenwood...
Series, Making Fiends and Salad Fingers
Salad Fingers
Salad Fingers is a post-apocalyptic psychological horror Flash cartoon series originally created by British cartoonist David Firth in July 2004 which gained rapid internet popularity in 2005...
.
The decline of traditional animation
Despite the box office success of Disney's Lilo & StitchLilo & Stitch
This article is about the movie. For the television series, see Lilo & Stitch: The Series.Lilo & Stitch is a 2002 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released on June 21, 2002...
, the failure of their much-hyped Treasure Planet
Treasure Planet
Treasure Planet is a 2002 animated science fiction film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 27, 2002...
seemed to ensure that there would be major cutbacks at Disney's animation studio. In 2004, Disney released what it announced to be its last traditionally-animated film, Home on the Range. The film received mixed reviews and was not successful at the box office.
That same year, the live-action film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a 2004 American pulp adventure science-fiction film written and directed by Kerry Conran in his directorial debut. The film is set in an alternative 1939 and follows the adventures of Polly Perkins , a newspaper reporter, and Harry Joseph "Joe" Sullivan ,...
was released. It was notable for being filmed entirely in front of a bluescreen, with the background being completely computer generated; only the actors and some props were real. Robert Zemeckis
Robert Zemeckis
Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future film series, as well as the Academy Award-winning live-action/animation epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit ,...
' film The Polar Express
The Polar Express (film)
The Polar Express is a 2004 motion capture computer-animated film based on the children's book of the same title by Chris Van Allsburg. Written, produced, and directed by Robert Zemeckis, the human characters in the film were animated using live action performance capture technique, with the...
, starring Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
in five roles, was completely CGI animation, but used performance capture technology to animate the characters. Zemeckis followed The Polar Express with two other motion capture films: Beowulf
Beowulf (film)
Beowulf is the name of several films based on the Old English poem of the same name:*Beowulf , a 1999 live action post-apocalyptic film starring Christopher Lambert...
and Disney's A Christmas Carol.
However, the release of The Princess and the Frog and The Secret of Kells in 2009, both nominated for an Academy Award, marked a renewed interest in traditional animation. In the same year, Coraline
Coraline (film)
Coraline is a 2009 stop-motion 3D fantasy/horror children's film based on Neil Gaiman's 2002 novel of the same name. It was produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. Written and directed by Henry Selick, it was released widely in US theaters on February 6, 2009, after a world premiere at...
and Wes Anderson
Wes Anderson
Wesley Wales Anderson is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer of features, short films and commercials....
's Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fantastic Mr. Fox (film)
Fantastic Mr. Fox is a 2009 American stop-motion animated film based on the Roald Dahl children's novel of the same name. This story is about a fox who steals food each night from three mean and wealthy farmers. The farmers are fed up with Mr Fox's theft and try to kill him, so they dig their way...
(also Academy Award nominated) renewed interest in stop motion animation.
Recognition by the Oscars
Historically, despite the continuation of the Best Animated Short Subject category, animated feature films seldom received much recognition from the Academy AwardsAcademy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for anything other than musical scores. The unprecedented nomination of Disney's Beauty and the Beast for Best Picture and five other awards changed things, even though it only won two Oscars for its song score. Animation had become so widely accepted by the beginning of the 21st century that, in 2001, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
introduced a new Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is one of the annual awards given by the Los Angeles-based professional organization, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
.
The three contenders for first honoree in this award were both CGI feature films: Shrek
Shrek
Shrek is a 2001 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. Loosely based on William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book Shrek!...
, by Dreamworks, Monsters, Inc.
Monsters, Inc.
Monsters, Inc. is a 2001 American computer-animated film and the fourth feature-length film produced by Pixar Animation Studios. It was directed by Pete Docter, co-directed by Lee Unkrich and David Silverman, and written by Jill Culton, Peter Docter, Ralph Eggleston, Dan Gerson, Jeff Pidgeon, Rhett...
, by Disney and Pixar, and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, by Nickelodeon and Paramount. The award that year went to Shrek. Films that year which were passed up included the acclaimed adult oriented film Waking Life
Waking Life
Waking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...
and the photorealistic CGI film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is a 2001 Japanese-American computer animated science fiction film directed by Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the Final Fantasy series of role-playing video games. It was the first photorealistic computer animated feature film and also holds the record for the most...
.
Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki
is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...
's critically acclaimed Spirited Away
Spirited Away
is a 2001 Japanese animated fantasy-adventure film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film tells the story of Chihiro Ogino, a sullen ten-year-old girl who, while moving to a new neighborhood and after her parents are transformed into pigs by the witch Yubaba,...
won the Oscar in 2002. Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo is a 2003 American comi-drama animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin who, along with a regal tang called Dory , searches for his abducted son Nemo...
received the 2003 award, defeating nominees The Triplets of Belleville and Brother Bear. Since then, Pixar has won the most awards in this category.
Annie Awards
The Annie AwardAnnie Award
The Annie Awards have been presented by the Los Angeles, California branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood since 1972...
s are presented each February by the Hollywood branch of the International Animated Film Association
International Animated Film Association
The International Animated Film Association or ASIFA is an international non-profit organization founded in 1960 in Annecy, France by the best known animation artists of the time such as the Canadian animator, Norman McLaren...
for achievements in the fields of film and television animation in the United States. Formed in 1972 to celebrate lifetime contributions to the various fields within animation, the awards started to honor animation as a whole, including current offerings.
See also
- History of animationHistory of animationAnimation is a graphic representation of drawings to show movement within those drawings. A series of drawings are linked together and usually photographed by a camera, or scanned into, or generated by a computer...
- List of animated feature films
- List of computer-animated feature films