Animation: The Issues And Issues In Animation

The first two Mickey shorts, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho drew no attention. And it was a failure as it failed to impress the audience and the fact that Walt could not find a distributor to release the cartoon shorts. But then came Steamboat Willie, the first animation that featured synchronized music and sound effects. It was first released in New York on November 18, 1928 and was an instant hit.

In 1920, while working at an ad company, Walt found out about the world of animation and started up with that.

Walt Disney started out by producing short animated films in 1922 and in 1928 introduced Mickey Mouse, the world most famous cartoon character shown in Figure 4 below (Olsson 1996; Kramer 2002). Following this breakthrough, Kramer (2002) found that Disney proceeded innovatively with new film technologies of sound and colour that resulted in the first successful animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

Founded in 1923 by Walter Elias Disney, Walt Disney is the pioneer of the animation industry (“The Walt Disney Company”, 2014). The first two cartoons that Disney created were silent films and could not be sold; he then created the third Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound – Steamboat Willie in November of 1928 ("Disney History," n.d.). Disney went on to win the Academy Award ® for Best Cartoon in 1932, which was the first year that this award was offered, for his cartoon Flowers and Trees ("Disney History," n.d.). Shortly after his cartoons were gaining popularity, Disney went into the merchandising industry, when Walt Disney accepted an offer of $300 by a man to put Mickey Mouse on some pencil tablets ("Disney History," n.d.). That was just the beginning for Disney merchandising, which soon included everything from “Mickey Mouse dolls, dishes,

Marking the first use of Disney’s multiplane camera, the film also incorporates realistic depictions of animal behavior, dynamic lighting and color effects, depictions of rain, wind, and lightning, ripples, and reflections, and the use of timed sound effects to produce specific dramatic, or emotional overtones. All of these advanced animation techniques learned in producing The Old Mill would subsequently be incorporated into Disney’s feature-length animated films. Walt Disney had a vision to fulfill. While Disney did not pioneer cartoon animation, he did broaden what animation can be – feature-length films to American audiences.

In 1923, Walt headed to Hollywood to make it big. He started out making advertisements for publishing and merchandising. He then began creating characters, some of them named Minnie, Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. Walt Disney decided to create his own animation studio which he called Laugh-O-Grams where he created his first animated film with the help of one of his brothers. They called this short film Steamboat Willie. Steamboat Willie was the first animated cartoon with sound to ever be created. Walt eventually married Lillian Bounds in 1925 and he bought his parent a home but the house he bought for them had a Carbon Monoxide leak and it killed his

In a world where technology is rapidly developing and evolving, it is sometimes hard to keep up with the changes that are made. When looking back on changes that are made it is particularly interesting to look at the development of animation over history. Today when one thinks about animation it is impossible not to think of Disney and their major motion pictures. The Shreck films, Finding Nemo, and Happy Feet, to name just some of the dozens of animated films Disney has produced, raked in million upon millions of dollars at the box office, and have been hit films with people in all age groups.

The cinematic language that we know of today would not be as it is today if we had synchronous sound recording from the beginning of film. Cinematic Language is the systems, methods or conventions by which movies communicate with the viewer. A few examples of cinematic language are; montage; mise en scene, the use of long takes, depth of field shooting in order associate people or objects; Expressionism, the use of lighting techniques, severe camera angles, and elaborate props, to name a few aspects; and realism, a technique to make the action seem as true to life as possible. The list of techniques and styles of cinematic language go on, and can only be limited by the imagination. Early films, and early sound films both had something in common; they lacked many elements of the cinematic language. The reason sound films reverted back to the same pre-cinematic style of early films, was due to the fact that they had technical difficulties, that required them to fall into the style of the old ways. I do believe that if filmmakers would have had sound from the beginning, with the same sense of movie direction they worked with, they would have used sound as a crutch rather than an enhancing element.

Walt always used the best technology. In 1928 he created the first talking cartoon called Steamboat Willie starring Mickey Mouse.

Stop motion animation is when you take a picture of something, move it ever so slightly (depending on how smooth you want the sequence to be) then take another picture and so on and so on. The sequence of pictures will create an illusion of a moving image. When creating a stop motion animation it can either be done traditionally or a computer can be used to generate the background sets.

In the 1937 film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the tale revolutionized and began a Golden Age of animation. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the very first full length animated motion picture as well as the first film to release a motion-picture soundtrack recording in 1944 by the Disney studio. (Backlots) Also, “it was the first to employ the use of Technicolor, and features the first large-scale use of the multiplane camera which became a signature at Disney for decades”. (Backlots)

Pixar Animation Studios was founded in 1979, initially specializing in producing state of the art computer hardware (Carlson, 2003). In 1990, due to poor product sales the company diversified from its core business and began producing computer animated commercials for outside companies. Success came for Pixar after the production of its first computer animated film ‘Toy story’ in 1995 (Hutton and Baute, 2007). Since then, Pixar has made many innovative animated feature films, with well known ones including - A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille and WALL-E, six of which are in the top grossing animated

The Disney brothers began creating countless cartoons (some successful and others not so much), and in 1928, introduced Mickey Mouse to the world in the animated short, Steamboat Willie—widely described as the

Anime and cartoons had very similar origins. Gertie the Dinosaur from 1914 is considered the first American cartoon. Japan’s first anime is not as clear, but many believe it to be 1917’s An Obtuse Sword. Both of these animated features were short, silent, and black-and-white. Their rise in popularity and introduction of the style of animation seen in the modern world did not begin until their “Golden Age” of animation. In the US, the “Golden Age” was from the 1920’s to 1960’s; this was when Walt Disney created his own animation studio and began to put out longer cartoons with sound and color. Snow White from the late 30’s was Disney’s first big feature film hit. In the

When one thinks about the cartoons of the past, like TigerSharks, ThunderCats, and G.I. Joe, one will remember the rich story lines, the wild character profiles, and the inspiring battle cries of "Yo Joe" and "Thunder, Thunder, ThunderCats, Ho!!" With technology changing every day, a new form of animation has arisen. This new form is called "Japanimation" or "Anime." It is slowly becoming a part of this culture just as much as hamburgers and pizza. It still has a long way to go, but it is slowly creeping into the American genre of animation.