Modern animation in the United States

Modern animation of the United States describes the history of animation in the United States of America from the late 1980s to the start of the 21st century. This period is sometimes referred to as the American animation renaissance, during which many large American entertainment companies reformed and reinvigorated their animation departments following general decline during the 1970s and 1980s.

1988 to present

The Return of Disney

By the mid-1980s, the American animation industry had sunk to a decrepit state. Children's cartoons intended primarily as toy advertising dominated the afternoon cartoon shows and Saturday morning cartoons, with the only experimentation and development in animation taking place in small, independent animated cartoons. Animated feature films still appeared occasionally in theaters, but the glory days of old had disappeared. Even animation goliath Disney, which barely fought off a corporate takeover attempt in the 1980s, was considering abandoning the production of feature-length animated films.

Film fans, audiences, critics, and animators alike were all taken by surprise when the long-awaited renaissance of animation began with the most ancient, conservative, and mainstream cartoon producer: Disney. The company underwent a company shakeup in the 1980s, and new chairman Michael Eisner and returning Animation Chairman Roy E. Disney got the company back on its feet by returning it to its roots and revitalizing its movie studios. In 1988 the studio collaborated with Steven Spielberg and produced Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which featured many classic animated characters from the Golden Age of Cartoons. The film was a success, demonstrating that quality animation could once again be seen on movie screens - and, more important, it could be profitable. Roger Rabbit's success also opened the door to serious, scholarly inquiry into the history and techniques of animation, as well as expanding the animation fandom. 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.

Disney followed up Who Framed Roger Rabbit with The Little Mermaid, the first of a series of highly successful new animated feature films. The studio invested heavily in the new technology of computer animation to beef up its animation, producing The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, films which drew in audiences of the sort not seen in decades. 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 and currently only animated feature to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. The peak of Disney's success was in 1994 when The Lion King surpassed the wildest hopes of the studio to become one of the most successful films of all time. Then in 1995, Disney, along with Pixar Animation Studios, released Toy Story, the first ever film entirely in Computer-generated imagery (CGI). In addition to its groundbreaking technology, the movie proved a critical and commercial favorite, being heralded as one of the greatest motion pictures of all time. Later Disney films such as Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan were box office and critical successes as well.

Disney also took huge strides in TV animation, with high quality animated shows such as The Wuzzles, The Gummi Bears, and the monster success DuckTales. The latter created a phenomenon that resulted in heavy investment in syndicated cartoons, and eventually resulted in The Disney Afternoon, a two-hour syndicated television programming block of high quality animated shows. Disney's successes continued with Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, Darkwing Duck, Goof Troop and Gargoyles. The popularity of syndicated Disney series continues today with Proud Family and Kim Possible.

Spielberg and animation

Spielberg and Bluth

While Disney was bringing new life to the state of animation, Steven Spielberg was making his own inroads as well. A lifelong animation fan, Spielberg was also interested in producing high-quality animation and worked with rival animation producer Don Bluth to produce An American Tail. The box-office success of this movie, and Bluth's subsequent follow up The Land Before Time made Hollywood realize that Disney did not have a monopoly on profitable animated feature films. The other Hollywood studios began producing their own animated feature films once again, often imitating Disney; Don Bluth's 1997 feature Anastasia, produced by Fox, was in particular cited as launching Fox's animation studios as a rival for Disney; however, the studios failed to achieve success after Anastasia and were closed in 2000 after the release of Titan A.E..

Spielberg and Warner Bros.

Spielberg, meanwhile, turned to TV animation and worked with the Warner Bros. animation studio 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, inspired Warner Bros. to resurrect its moribund animation studio and become a contender once again in the field of animated cartoons. Tiny Toon Adventures was followed by Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain. Not only did these cartoons bring in new viewers to Warner Bros., they also captured the attention of older viewers (teenagers and adults). Warner Bros., minus Spielberg, continued with work such as Batman: The Animated Series, considered by many fans to be the definitive animated treatment of the Batman mythos. Combined, the four Warner Bros. series won a total of seventeen Daytime Emmy Awards.

Bakshi returns

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 and the legendary British band the Rolling Stones to make a part-live-action, part-animated music video of The Harlem Shuffle, which was released in early 1986. Although the music video built a production team at Bakshi Animation whose next project was the short-lived TV series Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Bakshi and co. worked on several other projects in the late 1980s, but his biggest project was the critically panned Cool World, which was released in 1992.

Outsourcing animation

The major reason for the increase in the quantity of American animation was the ability to outsource the actual animation grunt work to cheaper animation houses in countries in South and South East Asia resulting in high 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 cells were mailed back to the 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 and require scenes to be redone, to the dismay of their directors.

Animation for adults

The Simpsons

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. In 1989, The Simpsons, a parody of the "Middle American" lifestyle, based on a short animated cartoon segment of The Tracey Ullman Show, became the first prime-time animated series since The Flintstones to capture a sizable viewing audience. It was the first major hit series for the fledgling Fox network, and it caused a minor sensation, entering popular culture and gaining wide acclaim for its satirical handling of American culture, society as a whole and the human condition. As of 2008, The Simpsons is still running.

Ren and Stimpy

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 the traditional politically correct "Saturday morning" cartoon and instead favored the outrageous style of the shorts from the Golden Age period. Indeed, the series creator, John Kricfalusi, who had worked as an animator during the "Saturday morning slump", was largely influenced by the classic works of Bob Clampett.

Spike and Mike

Alongside the mainstream revival of animation in the 1990s there was a stranger and more experimental movement occurring. 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, 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 the trio of little girl superheroes that would later gain much popularity under their new moniker The Powerpuff Girls.

However, the festival gradually turned into a program of films called Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation which become an underground movement for adult humor and subject matter.

Adult Swim

In 1994, Cartoon Network gave the nod to a new series titled 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. The series opened the vaults of Hanna-Barbera Productions, now owned by Cartoon Network. It was the beginning of the now common practice of using old stale Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters for new edgier productions, such as the surealistic Sealab 2021, based on the early 1970s short lived environmentally themed cartoon, Sealab 2020. Also, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, about a lackluster superhero, Birdman who was 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.

In addition to the deep archives of old and cheap animation, independent animation has also begun to benefit from newer digital technologies. An artist with sufficient technical skills can explore new styles and forms with much greater freedom. The traditional animation skills of drawing and inking have given way to pilfering and digital manipulation to produce new and more aggressive forms of animation.

In addition to these new programs, American audiences—particularly those in geographic areas influenced by the intermixing of Pacific Rim cultures—began to embrace Japanese cartoons, or anime, sometime in the 1980s. This growing anime home video market catered to the teenage and college crowd, with a large number of Japanese animated series being translated into English. Initially access to the videos was limited, but as anime became more mainstream it found its way into the larger video stores all across the U.S. Because animation occupies a somewhat different place in Japanese culture, it includes a range of subject material not often addressed by American animation. (See also: manga)

Today, Adult Swim, a scheduling block of adult-oriented cartoons appearing on Cartoon Network beginning after primetime, leads the way in adult-oriented and cutting-edge animation. Adult Swim, which was originally on Sunday nights, now remains on the air until 5:00 a.m. ET, and is now broadcast every night of the week as of July 6th, 2007. The series produced exclusively for Adult Swim, such as The Brak Show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Venture Brothers and Tom Goes to the Mayor, tend to be surrealistic and bizarre, but are also considered fresh and original. Adult Swim had run episodes of Futurama up until 2008, now being broadcast on Comedy Central. However, Adult Swim had bought the license for 2012. It played a significant role in reviving Family Guy from cancellation. In addition to comedy cartoons, Adult Swim also runs several popular Anime series such as Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Eureka Seven, Bleach, and InuYasha.

Other cartoons for adults

Other TV networks also experimented with adult-oriented animation. MTV produced several animated series especially for its young adult audience, including Liquid Television and Beavis and Butt-head. Even USA Network found a cult following with its Duckman show. But the most successful adult-oriented animated series of the 1990s was the extremely politically incorrect South Park, which saw its beginnings in 1996 as a pirated Internet cartoon. After the success of South Park, Comedy Central went on to produce the even-racier Drawn Together series.

In 2005, adult animation pioneer Ralph Bakshi announced that he would begin working on another feature film, Last Days of Coney Island, which he is financing himself and producing independently.

The decline of Saturday morning

After being nearly comatose for over two decades, the American animation industry experienced a sudden surge of growth in the 1990s. A number of new, risk-taking animation studios arose, and they found a wide number of markets to peddle their talents to. In addition to animated TV series, animation of all sorts was used in TV commercials, video games, and music videos. Newer, smaller animation studios arose to challenge the dominance of Hanna-Barbera Productions for the TV animation market.

Indeed, Hanna-Barbera found itself unable to compete in the new, varied market for cartoons. During the days when they had dominated the entire spectrum of Saturday morning cartoons, Hanna-Barbera had virtually no competition; this caused the quality of their series in general to deteriorate. Now in the 1990s, the studio could only offer retreads such as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo and Tom and Jerry Kids to compete with the Fox Kids Network shows and Warner Bros.' new WB Network. Hanna-Barbera lagged behind, and found itself being bought outright by Turner Broadcasting.

Not only did Hanna-Barbera have trouble adapting to the changes sweeping across television. The "Big Three" networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS) all found their once-loyal audiences being eroded by competition from the newer networks, including newer cable TV networks such as Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and the Cartoon Network. Video games and movies available on video also helped to change the market, to the point where for a while NBC abandoned showing cartoons completely. ABC was purchased by Disney, and Disney transformed its Saturday schedule into a series of Disney-produced animated cartoons.

While animated series on the major networks seemed lackluster, the cable television cartoons gave rise to a number of hits. Nickelodeon gave birth to hit shows such as Doug, Rugrats, The Ren and Stimpy Show, Rocko's Modern Life, SpongeBob SquarePants, and The Fairly OddParents. Meanwhile, Hanna-Barbera's new owner Turner focused the studio on the creation of new cartoons for the Cartoon Network. Hanna-Barbera saw an infusion of new blood, and a new generation of Hanna-Barbera cartoons was born, such as Dexter's Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, The Powerpuff Girls, and Courage the Cowardly Dog. Many of these cable television cartoons were, unlike most traditional Saturday morning cartoons, designed to appeal to adults as well as children, and thus incorporated plenty of "adult humor", such as pop-culture references and sexual innuendos.

Still, not every new piece of animation struck gold. Disney's animated feature films began to suffer in quality in the late 1990s, after producer Jeff Katzenberg left the studio and teamed up with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen to form the Dreamworks studio. Likewise, a number of animated feature films released during the 1990s tried to imitate the success of Disney, but just as in the 1930s and 1940s, the animated feature offerings from 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. failed to capture a sizable segment of Disney's feature film dominance of the market. Warner Bros., in particular, had a string of failures as its animated features Cats Don't Dance, Quest for Camelot and The Iron Giant (the last being praised by critics and audiences, but virtually ignored by the public at large) died at the box office. Warner Bros. also tried to re-create Roger Rabbit's success with Space Jam, an attempt to combine the popularity of Bugs Bunny with basketball superstar Michael Jordan.

In addition, the kiddie-marketing trend continued throughout the 1990s, even if it wasn't quite as pervasive as it had been a decade earlier. Two major toy phenomena dominated most of the weekday-afternoon kid-oriented TV programming: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers in the mid-1990s, and Pokémon in the later half of the decade and into the present day. Even as animation underwent a new rebirth in this decade, a great deal of attention (and consumer dollars) continued to be funneled into merchandising.

A major factor in the decline of the Saturday morning cartoon were new federal regulations. The Children's Television Act had been passed in 1990 but it wasn't until 1997 that its statutes were strictly enforced. It was at that time that the Federal Communications Commission began requiring three hours per week, during times when children would be awake, of educational and informational programming targeted directly toward children. Since this required three hours of programming that could be programmed to the general public to be "off limits," the networks naturally chose Saturday morning, when children were already watching, as a place to dump the federally mandated programs. This severely limited the content and quality of Saturday morning programming, requiring that almost every show contain some educational content. Since the regulation was implemented, Saturday morning cartoons have become increasingly monotonous, rehashing the same "moral values" as both plots and supposedly educational content. Fox and The WB were able to spell this problem by airing short 1-hour weekday children's blocks instead of morning news shows (in the case of The WB, by airing the history-themed Histeria! daily they were able to air most of their E/I programming outside Saturday and use the weekend block for entertainment), but those weekday blocks no longer exist. Cable networks, however, were not subject to these or most other FCC requirements, which allowed their series to thrive while the heavily restricted broadcast networks floundered.

The rise of computer animation

Yet another wild card was added to this crowded, competitive atmosphere with the rise of computer animation. The decade of the 1990s saw exponential improvement in the use of computer technology to enhance both animated sequences and live-action special effects, allowing lavish computer-animated sequences to dominate both. This new form of animation soon dominated the world of Hollywood special effects (the movies Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park included stunning computer-animated sequences), and it was only a matter of time before a full-length feature film would be produced entirely with computers.

Once again it was Disney that led the pack in this area. In the beginning it was in the 1982 film Tron, written and directed by Steven Lisberger, one of the first films from a major studio to use computer graphics extensively. Despite the film's initial unpopularity, it has remained a cult favorite due mainly to its innovative use of computer graphics and its computer and video-game plot line. In the next decade disney animators had quietly re-introduced computer-generated sequences into their movies as early as 1991's Beauty and the Beast. A computer-rendered magic carpet played a significant role in Aladdin (1992). In 1995, Disney partnered with Pixar to produce Toy Story, the first completely computer-generated feature film. The movie was a phenomenal success, and it created a wild Hollywood bandwagon, as other studios looked into producing their own computer-animated (or CGI) films.

Perhaps because it was developed first as a new method for creating special effects, computer animation was not seen primarily as a form of "children's entertainment." 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. The best special effects were often so subtle that they were completely unnoticed. The Academy Award-winning Forrest Gump (1994) depended heavily on computerized special effects to create the illusion of realism, even to the point where actor Tom Hanks was seen shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy. The film Titanic used computer imagery to enhance nearly every scene in its three-hour length, and this produced a level of realism that helped propel the film to become the biggest box-office smash of all time.

Computer animation also made inroads into television. The Saturday morning animated series ReBoot won a large cult following among adults, and this 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, producing high-quality special effects that their predecessors could only dream of for a relatively low price.

Other studios besides Disney tried their hand with computer animated feature films, and here they found what appeared to be a chink in the armor of Disney's near-monopoly on animated box office success. While Dreamworks' Antz and Small Soldiers paled in comparison with the Disney-Pixar releases A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2, they finally succeeded in scoring big with Shrek in 2001. Shrek was a gigantic box-office hit, pulling in audiences and overpowering Disney's summer release for that year, Atlantis. Even 20th Century Fox struck gold when it released a CGI animated feature in early 2002 entitled Ice Age. Not all studios had box-office success with computer animation, however. Paramount's Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, released in 2001, did not do that well in the box-office, but it did receive an Academy Award nomination and later found success as a television series which premiered the next year.

But the true star of the CGI revolution seemed to be Pixar. Even before Toy Story, the studio had made a name for itself by producing stunning computer-animated short films (their short Tin Toy won an Oscar); and when Disney tried to create a CGI feature film of its own without Pixar (Dinosaur), the result was noticeably lackluster, even though it was a financial success.

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.

CGI special effects increased to the point where the 2002 science fiction film Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones was considered by its director, George Lucas, 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, fully animated films featuring virtual human actors, or "synthespians", appear to be a few years away.

The fall of traditional animation

Disney seemed poised to lead the pack in cutting back on hand-drawn animation; despite the box office success of Lilo & Stitch, but the colossal failure of their much-hyped Treasure Planet seemed to ensure that there would be major cutbacks at Disney's animation studio. Disney's loss was further undercut when the 2002 Oscar for Animated Feature Film went to the hand-drawn Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, giving Disney its second loss in a row at the Academy Awards.

Disney has recently sold off all their custom animation desks and Dreamworks also announced that they will be abandoning traditionally drawn animation and will focus exclusively on computer-generated features from 2003 on. While traditional cel animation is likely to remain a mainstay of TV cartoons and TV commercials for the foreseeable future, scholars of animation history believe the era of classically drawn American animated features which began with Walt Disney's Snow White is about to come to a close. Others disagree, pointing to the moderate success of the cel animated film, Brother Bear, and the fact that Pixar has announced that it will produce cel animated films in its own attempt to revive the artform.

In 2004, Disney released its final 2-D animated film, Home on the Range. The film received mixed reviews and was a box office failure. That same year, the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was released. It is notable for being filmed entirely in front of a bluescreen with the background being completely computer generated and only the actors and some props being real. Robert Zemeckis' film The Polar Express starring Tom Hanks in five roles is completely CGI animation but uses performance capture technology to animate the characters.

In July 2005, Disney announced it was closing DisneyToon Studios Australia in 2006. That studio, responsible for direct-to-video sequels such as The Lion King 1 1/2, is Disney's last bastion of hand-drawn animation. In 2006, however, Pixar's creative chief, John Lasseter, has told Time magazine that he may restore Disney's traditional animation unit, stating "Of all studios that should be doing 2-D animation, it should be Disney." [2]

Rise of internet & Flash animation

The late 1990s saw the rise of Flash animation, produced in the U.S. and elsewhere, through the internet . It can be created in Flash or with other programs capable of writing .swf files. The term Flash animation not only refers to the file format but to a certain kind of movement and visual style which, in many circles, is seen as simplistic or unpolished. However, with dozens of Flash animated television series, countless more Flash animated television commercials, and award-winning online shorts in circulation, Flash animation is enjoying a golden age.

Some popular Flash animated cartoons include Joe Cartoons, Stickdeath.com, Happy Tree Friends, Homestar Runner, The Brackenwood Series, and Salad Fingers.

Animation accolades

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 two major contenders for first honoree in this award were both CGI feature films: Shrek, by Dreamworks, and Monsters, Inc., by Disney and Pixar. The award that year went to Shrek. However, there were complaints that the award seemed to be oriented to family films since a relatively minor, albeit praised, animated film, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, was the third nominee and not the acclaimed innovative adult oriented film Waking Life, nor the visually ground breaking Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Hayao Miyazaki's critically acclaimed Spirited Away triumphed in 2002 as described earlier, and Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo received the 2003 award and defeated nominees The Triplets of Belleville and Brother Bear.

The Annie Awards are presented by the Los Angeles area branch of the International Animated Film Society, (Association international du film d'animation or ASIFA), known as ASIFA-Hollywood, each February for achievements in the fields of film and television animation in the US.

See also

• History of animation
• List of animated feature films

External links

• The offical site of the Annie Awards