Modern animation in the United States

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

History of animation in the United States

Modern animation in the United States from the late 1980s to the early 2000s is frequently referred to as the renaissance age of American animation.[1] During this period, many large American entertainment companies reformed and reinvigorated their animation departments, following the dark age, and the United States had an overall profound effect on animation globally.[2]

Many companies originating in the

ViacomCBS until 2022, and Paramount Global thereafter, rose to fame by creating the Nicktoons
brand in 1991 which led to various acclaimed programming under the label in the 1990s and 2000s.

In addition, new animation studios rose to prominence during this period. Most notably, Pixar debuted with the extremely successful Toy Story, the first feature film to entirely use computer-generated imagery (CGI).[8][9][10] DreamWorks Animation, freshly spun-out from DreamWorks (later named DreamWorks Pictures) debuted late in the era, but would become a major competitor and alternative to Disney in the subsequent decade.[11] During this era, the technology used to produce animation would experience revolutionary shifts. Beginning in the mid-1990s, traditional animation using hand-drawn cels declined in favor of more advanced up-and-coming methods, like digital ink and paint and 3D computer animation.[12] These changes in animation technology led to the millennium age of American animation, which started in the early 2000s and has continued into present day.[13]

Trends

Disney

Main article: Disney Renaissance

At the start of the 1980s, The Walt Disney Company 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 only Disney-directed 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 ($53.7 million in today's dollars)[14] entitled Tron. While Disney's stock dropped four percent after a screening for unenthusiastic investment analysts,[15] and in spite of only moderate grosses at the box office,[16] Tron received enthusiastic praise from film critic Roger Ebert,[17] became a cult favorite and turned out—many years later—to have a greater influence on animation (at Disney and elsewhere) than expected.[18]

In 1984, Disney became the target of a

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 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.[19] 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,[20]
another film featuring mice characters that competed directly with Mouse Detective in theaters.

In

Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears
, renewed interest in the studio.

Disney followed up Who Framed Roger Rabbit with Oliver & Company in 1988[21] and The Little Mermaid, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, in 1989 with songs by Broadway composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. The Little Mermaid was a huge critical and commercial success. It won two Academy Awards for its song and score, and became the first of a series of highly successful new Disney animated features.[3]

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[22] ($65.1 million in today's dollars), not even equalling the take of the original 1977 film.[23]

However, the films that followed it,

Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, followed by 2009's Up and 2010's Toy Story 3
.

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 ($675 million in today's dollars) and became the highest grossing movie of that year. As of 2024, The Lion King ranked as the 22nd highest grossing motion picture of all time in the United States and the highest grossing hand drawn movie of all time.[24] Subsequent Disney films from 1995 to 2000, including Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, Tarzan, and Fantasia 2000 were box office and/or critical successes as well, albeit modestly so when compared to Disney's early-1990s releases.

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 Dinosaur (Disney's first CG animated feature), Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet and Home on the Range failed to meet the critical and commercial expectations set by the 1990s phenomena, in spite of exceptions such as The Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch. At the same time, the high level of popular acclaim bestowed upon Toy Story, the first CGI animated film, sparked an industry trend. Based on the commercial success of Pixar's animated films and another 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 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."[25] He then launched the internet site SaveDisney.com[26] 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 NBCUniversal (Iger did so by offering NBC the services of Al Michaels, a play-by-play host then under contract to Disney subsidiary ABC Sports, as a trade). 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, but was abruptly halted after Winnie the Pooh
was commercially unsuccessful in 2011.

Television animation

See also: Disney 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'

Disney's Adventures of 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 in 1990, a two-hour syndicated television programming block of such animated cartoon shows as: The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1988-1991), Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (1989–1991), TaleSpin (1990–1991), Darkwing Duck (1991–1993, also airing on ABC), Goof Troop (1992–1994, also airing on ABC), Bonkers (1993–1994), Marsupilami (1993–1995), the critically acclaimed and still-popular Gargoyles (1994–1997), and Pepper Ann (1997–2000). TV animation also brought some animated feature film characters to Saturday morning, including The Little Mermaid (1992–1994), Aladdin (1994–1995), Timon & Pumbaa (1995–1999), Hercules (1998–1999) (the first three on CBS), and later The Legend of Tarzan (2001–2003) and House of Mouse (2001–2003).

The perennially-popular Disney's Mickey Mouse made his comeback and a revival on television with the animated series

Amphibia (2019-2022) The Owl House (2020-2023) and more recently Kiff
(2023-present) , the studio is now a parent company of Disney Branded Television (then Disney Channels Worldwide)

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".[27] 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", a reference to how the Three Little Pigs short managed to get more than three sequels.[28] Because of strong video sales, the studio continued to make these films in spite of negative critical reaction; 2002's Cinderella II: Dreams Come True received a rare 11% rating from the review-aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes.[29]

Under John Lasseter, the studio has brought this practice to an end.[30][31]

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 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 ($8.8 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

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.

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.[34]

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 ($25.3 million in today's dollars)[35] contributed to Sullivan Bluth's bankruptcy. Bluth's next feature, 1994's Thumbelina fared a little better critically but even worse 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 $146,710 against $47.3 million in current terms).[36]

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

Fox feature animation was produced by its Blue Sky Studios
unit until the Fox Animation Studios imprint was revived, without Bluth or Goldman, in 2009.

Warner Bros. Animation

After parting ways with Bluth, Spielberg turned to television animation, working with the

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., but 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—

Ozzy and Drix
.

The perennially-popular

Wabbit: A Looney Tunes Production
(2015-2020) was a modernized series of Bugs Bunny shorts in the Looney Tunes tradition, but both shows still got a slightly better reception from audiences than Baby Looney Tunes or Loonatics Unleashed.

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.[41] 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. Bakshi suspended production on the film in 2008,[42] but resumed in 2013 after a successful Kickstarter campaign.[43] The film was released in 2015.

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 foreign countries. 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 problems, the final product wouldn't 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 obviously 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.[citation needed]

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

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 broadcast 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. Its dominance over the networks' schedules was broken by other studios' shows, and once The Smurfs was cancelled by NBC in 1989, Hanna-Barbera had no other hit ongoing series on the air. Additionally, its ability to successfully exploit older characters like The Flintstones and Scooby-Doo with new shows was coming to an end; Scooby-Doo would end a near-continuous 22-year first-run after its most recent juniorized version, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, ended its run in 1991. The 1990 theatrical release of Jetsons: The Movie was a success for the fading studio and earned $20 million ($46.6 million in today's dollars).[44] 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.

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 and Warner Brothers cartoons, both old and new.

In 1989, producer Tom Ruegger had led an exodus of Hanna-Barbera staffers to restart Warner Bros. Animation. At first, the studio was constantly under threat of closure.[45] However, under Fred Seibert's guidance, Hanna-Barbera's new staff (whose ranks included Craig McCracken, Genndy Tartakovsky, Butch Hartman and Seth MacFarlane) created a new generation of Hanna-Barbera cartoons in the 1990s such as 2 Stupid Dogs, Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel and The Powerpuff Girls. Alongside these Hanna-Barbera cartoons, shows from other companies also premiered on the channel such as Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Ed, Edd n Eddy 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. Cartoon Network continued to make a string of award-winning acclaimed iconic shows in the 2000s such as Samurai Jack, The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Codename: Kids Next Door, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Camp Lazlo, Ben 10, Chowder and many others. In the 2010s, Cartoon Network started to make groundbreaking iconic beloved cartoons that changed the industry such as Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, Steven Universe, We Bare Bears, Craig of the Creek, Infinity Train, and many others. However, their schedules in the later half of the 2010s were and still are dominated Teen Titans Go! causing many fan favorite shows such as OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes and Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart to be overshadowed during their prime run on the channel, leading to their cancellation.

Boomerang
.

In 1997, Fred Seibert left Hanna-Barbera to found his studio.[47] In 1998, Hanna-Barbera moved to the same building as Warner Bros. Animation; the use of the Hanna-Barbera name for new productions ended with William Hanna's death in 2001. Hanna and Barbera continued to work as Time Warner employees and consultants until their respective deaths in 2001 and 2006; the name is still used for productions based on properties created during the Hanna-Barbera era. Cartoon Network Studios now handles most original animation for the network.

Nickelodeon

In 1991,

TNN revived the show in a more risqué form
in 2003, with Kricfalusi receiving more creative freedom, but it only lasted ten episodes.

From the early 1990s to the late 2000s,

multimedia franchises, most notably Rugrats, SpongeBob SquarePants (both franchises having three theatrical films and TV movies), and Avatar: The Last Airbender (which garnered both a sequel series and a live action series
).

Other cable networks

The

DuckTales which was their first reboot, Big City Greens, Amphibia, The Owl House, and The Ghost and Molly McGee. On cable TV, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, and Disney Channel
all grew to a point where they were and are still competitive with the broadcast networks around the world.

Spawn
.

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

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

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. The impact of the new regulations was almost instantaneous: by 1997, Nickelodeon had rocketed past its broadcast competitors to become the most-watched network on Saturday mornings.[48]

Animation for adults

Main article: Adult animation

The 1990s saw the beginnings of a new wave of animated cartoon series targeted primarily to adults and sometime teens, 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

Time magazine's December 31, 1999 issue named it the 20th century's best television series. The Simpsons Movie grossed over half a billion dollars worldwide.[49] 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."[50] Its 21st season began on September 27, 2009, breaking the 20-season record it once shared with Gunsmoke.[50]

The success of The Simpsons led Fox to develop other animated series aimed at adults, including Bob's Burgers (created by Loren Bouchard), King of the Hill (created by Mike Judge), Futurama (also by Groening), Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show (all created by Seth 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, now Hulu.[51]

Spike and Mike

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

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 and Adult Swim

Main article: Adult Swim

In 1994, the U.S. cable television network

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.

InuYasha and My Hero Academia
.

Other cartoons for adults

Other TV networks also experimented with adult-oriented animation.

3 South. Their original animated programming slowed to a halt by the end of the decade. USA Network's Duckman, starring the voice of Jason Alexander
, found a cult following.

Another successful adult-oriented animated series was

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
both of which met with box office success.

Cartoonist Bill Plympton transitioned from print to animation in the late 1980s and has continued to make adult-oriented shorts. Don Hertzfeldt began in animation in the 1990s and was nominated for an Academy Award in 2001 for Rejected.

Feature-length films like Cool World and

Bébé's Kids
helped establish a market for adult animation films.

The rise of computer animation

The 1990s saw major growth in the use of

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 run time; one of the film's 11 Oscars was for visual 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 computer animated movie. The film's success was so massive that other studios looked into producing their own CGI films. Computer-animated films turned out to be wildly popular, and animated films returned the highest gross margins (around 52%) of all film genres in the 2004-2013 timeframe.[52]

Computer animation also made inroads into television. The Saturday morning animated series

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

The most popular and successful competitor in the CGI race.

Walt Disney Company
for his vigorous advocacy of computer animation; Lasseter was hired as a full-time employee about a year later.

Lucas experienced cash flow issues after his 1983 divorce, and in 1986 Pixar was spun off from Lucasfilm as a separate corporation with $10 million in capital from

The Adventures of André and Wally B. (1984). After the spin-off, he would go on to produce Tin Toy (1988), which won an Oscar. The company transitioned into TV commercial production and projects such as the Computer Animation Production System for Disney. After the success of Tin Toy, Pixar made a deal with Disney to produce feature films. The first of these films, 1995's Toy Story, was a smash hit, which in turn led to additional successful films such as A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2
. By then, Jobs had become the owner of Pixar by keeping it alive with additional investments over the years; he had often considered selling it but changed his mind after Toy Story.

Pixar's string of critical and box-office successes continued with

Robert Iger, arranged for Disney to buy Pixar in a $7.4 billion all-stock deal ($11.5 billion in today's dollars) that turned Steve Jobs into Disney's largest individual shareholder.[54]
The deal was structured so that Disney Animation and Pixar Animation would continue to operate as completely separate studios under the Disney corporate umbrella; Lasseter was placed in charge of greenlighting all-new animated films for both studios in his new role as Chief Creative Officer, a position he had held for 12 years.

DreamWorks Animation

When

Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
 in 2006.

Furthermore, DreamWorks finally had their own success in 2001 with the

Universal Studios through its parent company NBCUniversal/Comcast
as of 2024.

Walt Disney Animation Studios

In 2003, noting the growing success of studios that relied on computer animation, Walt Disney Feature Animation announced it would be converted into a CGI studio.[citation needed]

Two years later,

Chief Creative Officer, respectively.[56] Lasseter later acknowledged that there had been discussions back in 2006 about closing Feature Animation as redundant since Disney now owned Pixar, which he and Catmull flatly rejected ("Not on our watch. We will never allow that to happen."); they resolved to try to save Walt Disney's creative legacy by bringing his animation studio "back up to the creative level it had to be".[57][58]

To maintain the separateness of Disney and Pixar (even though they share common ownership and senior management), it was outlined that each studio is to remain solely responsible for its own projects and is not allowed to borrow personnel from or lend tasks out to the other.[59][60]

In 2007, the studio released Meet the Robinsons, which experienced a poor response at the box office despite the lukewarm critical and audience reception. The following film, 2008's Bolt, had the best critical reception of any Disney animated feature since Lilo & Stitch, and became a moderate success, receiving an Academy Award nomination. An adaptation of the Brothers Grimm's "Rapunzel" tale entitled Tangled was released in 2010, earning $591 million in worldwide box office revenue, and signified a return by the studio to fairytale-based features common in the traditional animation era. This trend was followed in 2013's global blockbuster hit Frozen, a film inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen tale, which released to widespread acclaim and was the first Disney animated film to earn over $1 billion in worldwide box office revenue[61][62][63] surpassing Pixar's Toy Story 3. Frozen also became the first film from Walt Disney Animation Studios to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.[64] They also had critical and commercial success with Oscar winners Big Hero 6, Zootopia and Encanto alongside (following in Pixar's footsteps) their own animated shorts Feast and Paperman; the latter was shown before Wreck-It Ralph.

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

Universal Studios attempted several times to become a viable participant in the market, finally achieving the goal in 2010 with Despicable Me, the first feature film from Illumination Entertainment which provided more hits for them within the following decade. In 2013, Dallas, TX based Reel FX released their first feature film Free Birds, which was a moderate success, a year later, they released The Book of Life
which was a huge success and was nominated for a golden globe for best animated feature.

Despite all its success, computer animation still relies on cartoon 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.

In 2004, the live-action film

Disney's A Christmas Carol
.

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.[65]

Some popular Flash animated cartoons include

Joe Cartoons, Weebl and Bob, Happy Tree Friends, Homestar Runner, the Brackenwood Series, Making Fiends and Salad Fingers
.

Animation accolades

Recognition by the Oscars

Historically, despite the continuation of the Best Animated Short Subject category, animated films seldom received much recognition from the

Best Original Screenplay. 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 the award were: Shrek, by DreamWorks, Monsters, Inc., by Disney/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 with the current exceptions being Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005, Happy Feet in 2006, Rango in 2011, Frozen in 2013, Big Hero 6 in 2014, Zootopia in 2016, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018, Encanto in 2021, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio in 2022 and The Boy and the Heron in 2023.

In 2013, the March 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine published the ballots of eight different Oscar voters in the Academy.[66] Of those eight, four voters abstained in the Best Animated Feature category due to inadequate knowledge of the subject. They admitted to not having seen all of the nominations, with one person stating "that ended when I was 6." Such disregard for animated films by the voters themselves is often criticized by American animators, who claim that "Hollywood doesn't care or know the first thing about animated films."[67]

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. Originally 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.

Legacy

Seven animated features,

Wall-E (2008) plus two animated shorts from Pixar Luxo Jr. (1986) and Tin Toy (1988), were each inducted into the National Film Registry.[68][69][70]

Wall-E and 2015's Inside Out) were included on BBC's 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century poll.[71]

See also

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Bibliography

External links
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