Animated Cartooning's Been Around A While, And It May Be Back On Top Again Soon
Animation cartooning is the process of taking drawings and producing them as a film which can be viewed by individuals or audiences. It developed in the 19th century from flickbooks and various other machines which used to show a primitive form of animation. Most people think that the animations that are now produced on computers using 3D modeling techniques are cartoons, but that belief is incorrect. In the purest sense of the word, there are a number of animation methods which cannot be called cartoons. These include 3D modeling, the use of clay animations, and stop motion photography methods. In order for an animation to be called a cartoon it must be hand drawn, or if computers are used the results must look as if they are hand drawn cartoons. It must also contain a plot or storyline of some sort if it is to be recognized as an actual animated cartoon.
The history of animated cartoons stretches back to the beginning of film making. The first cartoon in the modern meaning of the word was created in 1908 by a Frenchman named Emile Cohl. The film was called Fantasmagorie and was less than 2 minutes in length. It consisted of a series of strange images that morphed into each other. The first cartoon with sound was produced by Max Fleischer in 1926, and was called My Old Kentucky Home. People often mistake the first appearance of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willey as the first cartoon with sound, but this film was in fact released 2 years later, in 1928.
Disney was, however, the first to release a full length animated cartoon in Technicolor. That was in 1937. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released to critical acclaim, and heralded the start of a long succession of hand drawn Disney cartoons. This string came to an end in 2004 with Home On The Range. In 2004 Disney announced that there would be no more hand drawn cartoons and that CGI would be used for all future films.
Happily for fans of the original style of animation cartooning, Disney has recently relented, and announced that the Frog Princess planned for release in 2009 will be a hand drawn cartoon. It is inevitable that since Disney has started to hand draw some of their cartoons again, many more studios will follow and the art of cartooning may well celebrate its 100th year in 2008 with a number of new projects being revealed.The future for the hand drawn cartoon is once again starting to look so bright that Mickey's going to need shades.
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