Etymology[edit]

The word "animation" stems from the Latin "animātiōn", stem of "animātiō", meaning "a
bestowing of life".[2] The primary meaning of the English word is "liveliness" and has been in
use much longer than the meaning of "moving image medium".

History[edit]
Main article: History of animation

Before cinematography[edit]

Nr. 10 in the reworked second series of Stampfer's stroboscopic discs published by

Trentsensky & Vieweg in 1833.

Hundreds of years before the introduction of true animation, people from all over the world
enjoyed shows with moving figures that were created and manipulated manually in puppetry,
automata, shadow play and the magic lantern. The multi-media phantasmagoria shows that
were very popular in West-European theatres from the late 18th century through the first half
of the 19th century, featured lifelike projections of moving ghosts and other frightful imagery
in motion.

A projecting praxinoscope, from 1882, here shown superimposing an animated figure on a

separately projected background scene

In 1833, the stroboscopic disc (better known as the phénakisticope) introduced the principle
of modern animation with sequential images that were shown one by one in quick succession
to form an optical illusion of motion pictures. Series of sequential images had occasionally
been made over thousands of years, but the stroboscopic disc provided the first method to
represent such images in fluent motion and for the first time had artists creating series with a
proper systematic breakdown of movements. The stroboscopic animation principle was also
applied in the zoetrope (1866), the flip book (1868) and the praxinoscope (1877). The
average 19th-century animation contained about 12 images that were displayed as a
continuous loop by spinning a device manually. The flip book often contained more pictures
and had a beginning and end, but its animation would not last longer than a few seconds. The
first to create much longer sequences seems to have been Charles-Émile Reynaud, who
between 1892 and 1900 had much success with his 10- to 15-minute-long Pantomimes
Lumineuses.

Silent era[edit]

When cinematography eventually broke through in 1895 after animated pictures had been
known for decades, the wonder of the realistic details in the new medium was seen as its
biggest accomplishment. Animation on film was not commercialized until a few years later
by manufacturers of optical toys, with chromolithography film loops (often traced from live-
action footage) for adapted toy magic lanterns intended for kids to use at home. It would take
some more years before animation reached movie theatres.

After earlier experiments by movie pioneers J. Stuart Blackton, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper,

Segundo de Chomón and Edwin S. Porter (among others), Blackton's The Haunted Hotel
(1907) was the first huge stop motion success, baffling audiences by showing objects that
apparently moved by themselves in full photographic detail, without signs of any known
stage trick.

Fantasmagorie (1908) by Émile Cohl

Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie (1908) is the oldest known example of what became known as
traditional (hand-drawn) animation. Other great artistic and very influential short films were
created by Ladislas Starevich with his puppet animations since 1910 and by Winsor McCay
with detailed drawn animation in films such as Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur
(1914).

During the 1910s, the production of animated "cartoons" became an industry in the US.[3]
Successful producer John Randolph Bray and animator Earl Hurd, patented the cel animation
process that dominated the animation industry for the rest of the century.[4][5] Felix the Cat,
who debuted in 1919, became the first animated superstar.

Golden age of US animation[edit]

In 1928, Steamboat Willie, featuring Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, popularized film
with synchronized sound and put Walt Disney's studio at the forefront of the animation
industry. In 1932, Disney also introduced the innovation of full colour (in Flowers and Trees)
as part of a three-year-long exclusive deal with Technicolor.

The enormous success of Mickey Mouse is seen as the start of the golden age of American
animation that would last until the 1960s. The United States dominated the world market of
animation with a plethora of cel-animated theatrical shorts. Several studios would introduce
characters that would become very popular and would have long-lasting careers, including
Walt Disney Productions' Goofy (1932) and Donald Duck (1934), Warner Bros. Cartoons'
Looney Tunes characters like Daffy Duck (1937), Bugs Bunny (1938/1940), Tweety
(1941/1942), Sylvester the Cat (1945), Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner (1949), Fleischer
Studios/Paramount Cartoon Studios' Betty Boop (1930), Popeye (1933), Superman (1941)
and Casper (1945), MGM cartoon studio's Tom and Jerry (1940) and Droopy, Walter Lantz
Productions/Universal Studio Cartoons' Woody Woodpecker (1940), Terrytoons/20th
Century Fox's Mighty Mouse (1942) and United Artists' Pink Panther (1963).

Animated features before CGI[edit]

Italian-Argentine cartoonist Quirino Cristiani showing the cut and articulated figure of his
satirical character El Peludo (based on President Yrigoyen) patented in 1916 for the
realization of his films, including the world's first animated feature film El Apóstol.[6]

In 1917, Italian-Argentine director Quirino Cristiani made the first feature-length film El
Apóstol (now lost), which became a critical and commercial success. It was followed by
Cristiani's Sin dejar rastros in 1918, but one day after its premiere the film was confiscated
by the government.

After working on it for three years, Lotte Reiniger released the German feature-length
silhouette animation Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed in 1926, the oldest extant animated
feature.
In 1937, Walt Disney Studios premiered their first animated feature, Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs, still one of the highest-grossing traditional animation features as of May 2020.
[7][8]
The Fleischer studios followed this example in 1939 with Gulliver's Travels with some
success. Partly due to foreign markets being cut off by the Second World War, Disney's next
features Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940) and Fleischer Studios' second animated feature Mr.
Bug Goes to Town (1941/1942) failed at the box office. For decades afterwards Disney would
be the only American studio to regularly produce animated features, until Ralph Bakshi
became the first to also release more than a handful features. Sullivan-Bluth Studios began to
regularly produce animated features starting with An American Tail in 1986.

Although relatively few titles became as successful as Disney's features, other countries
developed their own animation industries that produced both short and feature theatrical
animations in a wide variety of styles, relatively often including stop motion and cutout
animation techniques. Russia's Soyuzmultfilm animation studio, founded in 1936, produced
20 films (including shorts) per year on average and reached 1,582 titles in 2018. China,
Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic, Italy, France and Belgium were other countries that more
than occasionally released feature films, while Japan became a true powerhouse of animation
production, with its own recognizable and influential anime style of effective limited
animation.

Animation on television[edit]

Animation became very popular on television since the 1950s, when television sets started to
become common in most developed countries. Cartoons were mainly programmed for
children, on convenient time slots, and especially US youth spent many hours watching
Saturday-morning cartoons. Many classic cartoons found a new life on the small screen and
by the end of the 1950s, production of new animated cartoons started to shift from theatrical
releases to TV series. Hanna-Barbera Productions was especially prolific and had huge hit
series, such as The Flintstones (1960–1966) (the first prime time animated series), Scooby-
Doo (since 1969) and Belgian co-production The Smurfs (1981–1989). The constraints of
American television programming and the demand for an enormous quantity resulted in
cheaper and quicker limited animation methods and much more formulaic scripts. Quality
dwindled until more daring animation surfaced in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s with
hit series such as The Simpsons (since 1989) as part of a "renaissance" of American
animation.

While US animated series also spawned successes internationally, many other countries
produced their own child-oriented programming, relatively often preferring stop motion and
puppetry over cel animation. Japanese anime TV series became very successful
internationally since the 1960s, and European producers looking for affordable cel animators
relatively often started co-productions with Japanese studios, resulting in hit series such as
Barbapapa (The Netherlands/Japan/France 1973–1977), Wickie und die starken Männer/小
さなバイキング ビッケ (Vicky the Viking) (Austria/Germany/Japan 1974) and Il était une
fois... (Once Upon a Time...) (France/Japan 1978).

Switch from cel animation to computer animation[edit]

Main article: History of computer animation

Computer animation was gradually developed since the 1940s. 3D wireframe animation
started popping up in the mainstream in the 1970s, with an early (short) appearance in the sci-
fi thriller Futureworld (1976).

The Rescuers Down Under was the first feature film to be completely created digitally
without a camera.[9] It was produced in a style that's very similar to traditional cel animation
on the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), developed by The Walt Disney
Company in collaboration with Pixar in the late 1980s.

The so-called 3D style, more often associated with computer animation, has become
extremely popular since Pixar's Toy Story (1995), the first computer-animated feature in this
style.

Most of the cel animation studios switched to producing mostly computer animated films
around the 1990s, as it proved cheaper and more profitable. Not only the very popular 3D
animation style was generated with computers, but also most of the films and series with a
more traditional hand-crafted appearance, in which the charming characteristics of cel
animation could be emulated with software, while new digital tools helped developing new
styles and effects.[10][11][12][13][14][15]