Modern animation in the United States

History of animation in the United States
Animation in the United States during the silent era
Golden Age of American animation
Animation in the United States in the television era
Modern animation in the United States
v · d · e

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.

Trends

Disney

Main article: Disney Renaissance

At the start 1980s, Walt Disney Productions 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 ($38.7 million in today's dollars)^[1] entitled Tron. While Disney's stock dropped four percent after a screening for unenthusiastic investment analysts,^[2] and in spite of only moderate grosses at the box office,^[3] Tron received enthusiastic praise from film critic Roger Ebert,^[4] became a cult favorite and turned out—many years later—to have a greater influence on animation (at Disney and elsewhere) than expected.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[5] 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,^[6] 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^[7] 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^[8] ($46.9 million in today's dollars), not even equalling the take of the original 1977 film.^[9]

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 ($487 million 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.^[10] 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."^[11] He then launched the internet site SaveDisney.com^[12] in an attempt to preserve the integrity of the company and to oust Eisner, who resigned in 2005 after public opinion turned against him.^{[citation needed]}

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.

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 Wuzzles 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.

Direct to video sequels

DisneyToon 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".^[13] 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." ^[14] 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.^[15]

Under John Lasseter, the studio has brought this practice to an end.^[16][17]

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.

Don Bluth

See also: Sullivan Bluth Studios

Don Bluth'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 ($6.34 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 ($95.1 million in today's dollars).^[18] 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 ($89.3 million in today's dollars)^[19] 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.^[20]

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 ($18.2 million in today's dollars)^[21] 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 $106 thousand against $34.1 million in current terms).^[22] 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.^{[citation needed]}

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,^[23] 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.

Warner Bros.

See also: Warner Bros. Animation

After parting ways with Bluth, Spielberg turned to television animation, working with the Warner Bros. 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.^[24]

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.^[25] However, another 2003 feature, Looney Tunes: Back in Action, did poorly at the box office, grossing about a fourth of its $80 million budget ($95.5 million in current terms).^[26] 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.

Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi, 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.^[27] 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.^[28]

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 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.

First-run syndicated animation

Main article: Broadcast syndication#First-run syndication in the U.S.#The 1970s and 1980s#Animated series

The older Bugs Bunny and Popeye cartoons made way for first-run syndicated 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.

The fall of Saturday morning

From Hanna-Barbera to Cartoon Network

See also: Hanna-Barbera and 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 Smurfs 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 ($33.6 million in today's dollars).^[29] 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.^[30] 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.^[31] 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.

Nickelodeon

In 1991, Nickelodeon 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.^{[citation needed]} 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.

Other cable networks

The Disney Channel 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.

Broadcast networks

As the 1990s began, the "Big Three" networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) were no longer a three-way oligopoly. 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.

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 Show, 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 Awards, 26 Annie Awards 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.^[32] 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."^[33] Its 21st season began on September 27, 2009, breaking the 20-season record it once shared with Gunsmoke.^[33]

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.^[34]

Spike and Mike

Alongside the mainstream revival of animation in the 1990s, a stranger and more experimental movement 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.

Cartoon Network & Adult Swim

Main article: Adult Swim

In 1994, the U.S. cable television network Cartoon Network 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.

Other cartoons for adults

Other TV networks also experimented with adult-oriented animation. MTV 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.

The rise of computer animation

The 1990s saw exponential growth 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.

Pixar

See also: Pixar

The most popular and successful competitor in the CGI race turned out to be Pixar. 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.^[35] When Eisner stepped down in 2005, his replacement, Robert Iger, bought Pixar in a $7.4 billion all-stock deal ($8.32 billion in today's dollars) that turned Steve Jobs into Disney's largest individual shareholder.^[36] 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.

Dreamworks

See also: DreamWorks Animation

When Jeffrey Katzenberg 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.

Independents and others

Other studios attempted to get into the CGI game. After ending its relationship with Don Bluth, 20th Century Fox 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".

Rise of Internet and Flash animation

See also: Flash animation

The late 1990s saw the rise of Flash animation—animated films created using the Adobe Flash animation software—produced in the U.S. and elsewhere, and distributed through the Internet.^[37] 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.^{[by whom?]} There are dozens of Flash-animated television series, countless more Flash animated television commercials, and award-winning online shorts in circulation.^{[citation needed]}

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 decline of traditional animation

Despite the box office success of Disney's Lilo & Stitch, 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.

Animation accolades

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 Awards 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.

Annie Awards

See also: Annie Award

The Annie Awards 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.

See also

	Animation portal
	United States portal

• History of animation
• List of animated feature films
• List of computer-animated feature films

References

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External links

• The official site of the Annie Awards