Modern American animation

In this article I will explain the history of the animation in the United States from the late 1980s to the beginning of the 21st century. This period is often referred to as the American animation renaissance, during which many American major entertainment companies reform and revitalize its animation department after declines have been won at 60, 70, and 80.

From 1988 to the present

Disney's Return

In the mid 1980s, the animation industry in America fell into disgrace. Toy commercials pretending as entertainment program cartoons dominated Saturday evening and morning, and the only experiments were done by independent developers. Sometimes even an animated movie was projected on the theater from time to time, but the glory of the past disappeared. Even Disney's big animation cartoonist who was fighting corporate acquisitions in the 1980s was considering abandoning the animation movie production.

The enthusiastic audiences, critics, and animators were surprised when the long-awaited renaissance began with Disney, the oldest and most conservative company.

Disney made a dramatic change in 1980. The company's new chief executive Michael Eisner moved to his feet and returned to its roots to revitalize their research. In 1988, in collaboration with Stephen Spielberg, he produced an animation film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" directed by Robert Zemecchi. The movie was successful, and waiting for the push for that time to the animation industry. Roger Rabbit not only earned him a mountain of money for Disney, but also stimulated the popularity of classical animation that continued until this day. The history of animation suddenly became subject of research (and their fans). Several directors like Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng were highly appreciated several decades after the business legend suddenly took the limelight and was substantially ignored by viewers and industry experts.

Did Disney continue the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The first "Little Mermaid" of a series of animated films that seems to have regained Walt Disney's own golden era magic. The studio has invested heavily in new technology of computer animation for such purpose, but does super production such as "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin" that fascinated audiences not seen in decades I was able to do it. The hit disney peak was in 1994 when his film "Lion King" exceeded all expectations of this research and became one of the most successful histories. Disney movies such as "Pocahontas", "Notre Dame cathedral", "Hercules", "Muran", "Tarzan" and so on also got a big hit.

Disney also entered the ignored field of the animated TV series. "The new" Disney made his mark on the television picture due to the success of the show like "Winnie the Pooh's New Adventure", "Gumi Bears Disney Adventure", "Duck Adventure". Through association and repetition, Disney can provide high quality animation to TV. A series of large-scale popularization took place in the mid 90's, and several critics have designated "Gargoyles" as Disney animation project to be the most ambitious and most artistically done on television. Because Disney contained loud voices from the world of music such as Elton John (Lion King) and Lewis Miguel (Lewis Miguel) in each of these projects. Among them are Notre Dame, Ricky Martin (Hercules), Christina Aguilera (Moulin), Celine Dion (Beauty and the Beast), Ricardo Montanel (Aladdin), John Secada (Pocahontas).

Spielberg and animation

Spielberg and Blues

While Disney breathed new life into animation, Steven Spielberg was making his own way. Animated amateur life, Spielberg was also interested in making high quality animation, and he produced "Fievel and the New World" with his rival, animation producer of Don Bruce. Due to the success of this box office and the success of Blues' next movie "In the Land", Hollywood noticed Disney's monopoly of animation work. Other Hollywood studios resumed production of their own animated features but still Disney's 1997 film produced by Fox, Disney's falling into a trap attempting to imitate Don Blues, "Anastacia" Like the most successful work, "Anastasia" was attended by Thalia who played the central theme of the soundtrack in that version in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

Spielberg and Warner Bros.

On the other hand, Spielberg switched to television and cooperated with Warner Bros. of animation studio, "The Tiny Toon Adventures" which showed respect for the wonderful manga of "Manga" was produced. "The Tiny Toon Adventures" got a wonderful rating thanks to young viewers. It restored the dying Animation Studio by Warner Bros. and it came to compete again in the field of animation. Tiny toun Steven Spielberg was continued by presenting "Animaniak" and "Pinky and Brain". The latter not only attracted new viewers to the Warner Brothers, but also attracted attention of viewers young people and adults.

Return of Bakushi

Ralf Bassie, director of innovative animation movies like "Fritz the Cat" and the original "Lord of the Rings", returned to animation after pausing in the mid 80's. In 1985, he partnered with Canada 's young animator John Kricfalusi with the legendary British band "The Rolling Stones" to make animated music videos for "Harlem Shuffle" completed in the beginning of 1986. In many cases, he launched the production team "Bakshi Animation" project and continued short-lived but popular "New Adventure of The Mighty Mouse". Bakshi & Co worked on numerous projects at the end of 1980, but the biggest project was "Cool World: blond hair between the two worlds" which was premiered in 1992. Production was criticized as hard as uncontrollable and forgotten. By most people.

Outsourcing animation

The main reason for improving the quality of American animation is that you can outsource heavy lifting to cheaper animation houses in South and Southeast Asia that are getting numerous frames at low cost. Screenplay, character designs, and storyboards are held in the US office. Storyboards, models, color books will be mailed overseas. Even though the budget has been reduced, foreign production houses are selected for each episode or for each scene, depending on the amount available at that time. As a result, there is a big difference in quality for each episode. This is especially noticeable on programs like "Gargoyles" and "Batman": The Animated Series.

Adult animation

The Simpsons

In the 1990's, a new wave of anime series centered on adults came after its main purpose was absent in this field for more than 10 years. In 1989, the short animation "The Simpsons" based on "The Tracey Ullman Show" became the first animation series since "The Flintstones" and fascinated the majority of the audience. It was the first hit series of the launching Fox, with little sensitivity, entered popular culture and was widely accepted. In 2008, "The Simpsons" will not show signs of a stop, there is a possibility that it will exceed "Gum smoke" as a fiction program that televises the history of American television for a longer time. In 2007, we released their first film titled "The Simpsons: Film" which was dubbed in Spanish and Chinese.

Ren and Stimpy

In 1991, Nikolodeon "Ren and Stimpy Show", "Ren and Stimpy" broke all the traditional restrictions of the correct picture of Saturday morning and caused a riot, and instead a weird style of short Golden Age We supported. In addition, the series author, John Kricfalusi, who worked as an animator during Saturday morning sluggishness was greatly influenced by Bob Crampet's classic works.

Spike & microphone

Mainstream animation There was a strange and experimental movement with the 1990s. In 1989 short animation festival, organized by Craig Decker and Mike Gribble Spike (known as "Spike & Mike"), originally in San Diego. It all began with representations of theme-specific short stories known as animation classical festivals, at business meetings and trade locations throughout the country.

The collection was made mainly by short films recommended by Oscar, by students of the California Institute of Arts, and experimental works of the Canadian National Film Commission. The first festival included works of John Lasseter, Nick Park, Mike Judge. The judge's work "Frog Baseball" is the first appearance of the franchise characters Beavis and Butthead.

However, the festival gradually became a film program called Spikik and Mike 's chic and twist festival of animation, and it turned into adult humor and underground movement of the subject.

Adult swimming

In 1994, Cartoon Network gave consent to a new series called "Space Ghost" on the coast with a certain post-modern turn, showing a live interview with celebrities mixed with cartoon animation's original "Space Ghost" It was. This series has made dramatic progress by the production of Hanna-Barbera which is currently owned by Cartoon Network. It was the beginning of a general way of using the old Hanna-Barbera letters in the new work as a surreal "Underwater Laboratory 2021" based on the short comic "Sealab 2020" in the early 70's. Also, Harvey Birdman, a lawyer, an ordinary super hero, Birdman, originally a star of Birdman and Galaxy trio, became a lawyer. Like many characters in that series, that customer came entirely from the old Hanna-Barbera character.

Besides old and cheap large animation files, independent animators also began to benefit from the new digital technology. Artists with sufficient technical skills can explore new styles and forms more freely. The traditional animation skills of drawing and painting was to give way to digital manipulation and to positively use new techniques of animation.

Together with these new shows, in geographical areas affected by American viewers, especially with the cultures of the Pacific coast, we began to adopt Japanese cartoons or anime, 80. Many Japanese series translated into English. Although the initial access was limited to video, the animation which became mainstream entered the movie department store in the United States. Animation occupies different places of Japanese culture, including various problems not treated in American animation.

"Adult Swim" is an animation block for adults issued at the beginning of the Golden Time at Cartoon Network, leading the adult industry and equipped with the latest animation technology. Adult Swim broadcast on Sunday night in 2006 was broadcast until 5:00 am and was broadcast every evening except Friday. The series produced exclusively for adult swim, such as "The Brak Show", "Aqua Teen Hunger Force", "Tom Goes to the Mayor" tends to be strange and strange, but also fresh and ingenious It will be done. Adult swimming reissued the series "Futurama" and played an important role to avoid cancellation of "Family Guy". Also, we have published many popular anime series such as "FLCL", "Lupine the 3rd", "Inuyasha".

Other pictures for adults

Other TV stations also experimented animation for adults. MTV produced several animated series of "Liquid Television" and "Beavis and Butthead", especially for young and adult viewers. Even the USA Network program found a cult follow in his "Duckman show". However, the most successful adult series of 90 adults was "South Park" premiered in 1996 as a manga pirate on the Internet.

The faster pace animation and the more awkward secret lights are seen, the dominant power of television animation leads to an increasingly enthusiastic area and possibly apocalyptic things like "tick and duckman" It was.

In 2005, Ralph Bakshi, a pioneer of adult animation, is supposed to tackle the movie "The Last Day of Coney Island" which he will independently fund and produce Told.

Saturday morning decline

After almost using coma for more than 20 years, American animation industry has grown rapidly in 1990. Several new studies are enthusiastic about taking risks and have found numerous markets to sell their talents. Along with animated TV series, animation used in television commercials, video games, music videos. A small animation studio challenged "Hanna-Barbera Productions" in the TV animation market.

In fact, Hanna-Barbera could not compete with a new kind of animation on the market. During the time that dominated the entire spectrum of Saturday morning pictures Hannah Barbera was virtually uncompetitive and caused a drop in the quality of that series. In the 1990s, the survey only provided fried food as "Tom and Jerry Kids Show" called "Scoop Doo" to compete with "Fox Kids" and the new "WB TV Network" from Warner Bros. I found it was behind and purchased completely by Turner Broadcasting.

Hanna-Barbera was not only problematic in adapting to changes that are spreading throughout the television. The "Big Three" network (ABC, NBC, CBS) discovered that faithful audiences were eroded by competition with new channels such as "Cable TV", Disney Channel, Cartoon Network like Nickelodeon. Video games and movies available in the video also helped change the market to the point that it gave NBC comic strips for a while for a while. ABC was bought by Disney and Disney turned the grill on a series of Disney cartoons on Saturday.

The series animated in a large-scale network seemed mediocre, but the animation of cable television had several successes. Nickelodeon saw a light cult hit like "Doug", "Rugrats", "Ren and Stimpy", "Rocko's Modern Life", "SpongeBob", "Invader Zim" and "The Fairly Odd Parents". Meanwhile, Time Warner, Hanna-Barbera's new owner, has focused on creating new drawings for cartoon networks. Hanna-Barbera is a fresh inflow of blood, and a new-generation drawing of Hanna-Barbera's manga is "Dexter's Laboratory", "Johnny Bravo", "Cow and Chicken", "Powerpuff Girls", "Courage the Cowardly Dog" I was born. "

Still, each new work of animation was not gold mine. Producer Jeff Katzenberg leaves the studio, after Steven Spielberg and David Geffen teamed up and formed DreamWorks, Disney's animated movies began to decline in quality until the end of 1990. Also, some animated movies were released in 1990 to try to imitate the success of Disney, but as in 1930 and 1940, the animation of the 20th century Fox and Warner Bros. was dominant in Disney movie I could not catch a considerable part. In particular, the Warner Bros. is "not cats dancing", "magic sword", "iron giant" (the latter has been admired by critics and audiences, but ignored by most people There was a failure of). The box office Warner Bros. also tried to reproduce the success from "Roger Rabbit" to "Space Jam". This is an attempt to combine the popularity of Bugs Bunny with Michael Jordan, a basketball superstar.

Furthermore, the market trend of children continued in the 1990s, and it was as wide as it was ten years ago. Two major events dominated many children's programs on the afternoon of the weekend: "Mighty Morphin Power Rangers" in the mid 90's and "Pokemon" from the mid 2000 to the middle of 2000. In the 2000s, a large amount of expenses (and a large amount of expenses) continued to be spent on commercialization.

Growth of computer animation

Yet another wildcard, along with the emergence of a new wave of "Computer Animation", has been added to this intense atmosphere of this crowded competition. During the decade of the 1990s, I experienced an exponential improvement in the use of computers to enhance animated sequences and special effects. This new form of entertainment quickly dominated the world of special effects in Hollywood (movie "Terminator 2": "Judgment" and "Jurassic Park" contained an impressive computer animation sequence), and movies It was just a matter of time to find out that it was made entirely by computer.

It was Disney who led the area. Like "Beauty and the Beast" in the beginning of 1991, Disney's animators gently introduced a computer generated sequence to their movies. Computer generated magic carpet played an important role in "Aladdin". In 1995, Disney produced Pixar "Toy Story", the first completely computer - generated film. This movie was a huge success and created a new movement. In other studies investigated, a unique computer animation movie (CGI) has been produced.

Computer animation was not seen as a form of "children's entertainment", probably because it was developed as a new way to create special effects first. After decades as a related but separate industry, the boundary between animation and special effects was eliminated by the spread of computer special effects until the use of computers in Hollywood movies became natural . The best special effect is very subtle, so I am completely unaware of it. The winner of Oscar who got the best special effect in "Forrest Gump" (1994) is great for the special effect of the computer as long as you see the actor Tom Hanks shaking hands with President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in the US It depended. The movie "Titanic" used computer graphics to bring out each scene in three hours, which produced a level realism that helped the movie itself to become the largest movie box office tax collection ever.

Computer animation is also on television. The Saturday morning series "ReBoot" gained a lot of popularity among adults, this was the first of many CGI series such as "Beast Wars", "Planet of War" and "Roughneck". The quality of computer animation has improved considerably for each new series. The non-animated television series (especially the science fiction "Babylon 5") has invested heavily in CGI production, and we were able to produce high quality predecessor special effects at relatively low prices.

Other studies on Disney have tried their lucks in computer animated movies and have found their weaknesses to monopolies that have been successful in animation Disney box office. DreamWorks of "Antz" and "Small Soldiers" was colorless compared to the production of "Bug" and "Toy Story 2" of Disney - Pixar, but in 2001 "Shrek" finally got a huge hit number. The success of the box office attracted the masses in the summer of production and acquisition of the year, "Atlantis". When I produced a CGI animated film entitled "Ice Age" at the beginning of 2002, even 20th Century Fox pulled out oil. Although the box office did not succeed at box office with Paramount 's adventure of "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" published in 2001, I received a recommendation from the Academy and succeeded later. A TV series based on the movie awarded the following year.

But the real star of the CGI revolution was like Pixar. Even in front of "Toy Story", this research is a name that produces wonderful animation shorts (his short "Tin Toy" won Oscar), when Disney tried to make CGI film independently without Pixar ("Dinosaur").

In spite of this success, computer animation has been drawn and continues to depend on stylized characters. In 2001, Living first tried to create a completely animated world using "Human Actor" Digital "Final Fantasy: Within Spirits".

The special effect of CGI increased to the extent that SF movie "Star Wars episode 2: clone attack" was considered as the first animation movie using real actors in 2002. In fact, since the CGI effect is becoming very common, it is difficult to distinguish it from the real life of computer animation. Computer characters are completely displayed on the screen, like Gorham of "Star Wars Episode 1: Phantom · Menace", the main character of "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" and "The Protagonist" The number of films that interact with the real thing is increasing. Hulk "computer-generated characters became accepted actors, but movies animated fully with virtual actors seem to be missing in a few years.

Despite the success of "Lilo & Stitch" in box office, Disney seems to be ready to lead the reduction of hand-drawn animation, but the failure of the busy summer "Treasure Planet" is a further reduction in Disney animation research It seemed to be sure. The loss when Oscar of the Best Animated Film Award was handed to the artist (hand) by Mr. Hayao Miyazaki was the greatest damage to Disney. "Spirited Away" Disney brought a second defeat, following the Academy Awards.

Disney tidied up all the desks, Dreamworks Animation announced that it abandoned the traditional depicted animation and concentrate on computer generated works since 2003. Traditional animation of frames may remain supported by television cartoons and television advertisements in the near future. The school of animation history is about to finish the "era of classical American design" that started with Walt Disney movie "Snow White". The fact that others did not agree with this and announced that modest success of the traditionally animated movie "Brother Bear" and Pixar announced that it will produce traditional animated films to revive this art form I point out.

In 2004, he premiered the movies "Sky Captain" and "The World of Tomorrow". Please note that the whole movie was shot against a computer screen, the background was completely computer generated blue screens, and everything was a genuine actor. Robert Zemeckis' movie 'Polar Express' with 5 characters starring Tom Hanks is completely done with CGI animation, but animated characters using motion capture technology.

In July 2005, Disney announced that it will finish the study in Australia in 2006. This study, which is a sequel like "The Lion King III", was the last fortress of the Hand Disney artist. But in 2006, Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter tells Time magazine that he can restore Disney's traditional animation units.

The last wonderful animated movie that gathered huge profits at box office income in December 2009 is "Avatar" from the 20th century Fox supervised by James Cameron, that the quality of the special effect is truly impressive We received high evaluation about.

Animation Award

Since animation has been widely accepted, at the beginning of the XXI century in 2001, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introduced Oscar for the best animation movie. The two main rivals in the first year of this award were two CGI films: "Shrek" and "Monsters Inc." from DreamWorks. Disney Pixar. The prize was for "Shrek." But "Jimmy Neutron Adventure: Boy Genius" is not an innovative adult movie "Waking Life", critically acclaimed movie or a visually innovative movie. "Final Fantasy: Inside of Spirits." Mr. Hayao Miyazaki praised in 2002 "Spirited Away" and Disney Pixar's movie "Finding Nemo" in 2003 was awarded.

The Annie Prize was announced in February a competing animation for movies and television at the Los Angeles branch of the International Animation Association (ASIFA International Association), known as ASIFA - Hollywood.