Colegiul Naional Gheorghe Vrnceanu Bacu

Lucrare pentru obinerea certificatului de competen lingvistic la limba englez

The wonderful story of cartoons and animation

Profesori ndrumtori: Muraru Gabriela Balaban Bianca

Elev: Ioan George - Cristian

THE WONDERFUL STORY OF CARTOONS AND ANIMATION

2014

FOREWORD

From a narrow perspective cartoons are mere means of entertainment, but before jumping to biased conclusions we must first understand some key factors regarding them. In spite of their apparent trivial character, today animation strongly influences society both from a social and an economical point a few. Furthermore, at certain points during its awe-inspiring evolution it became a platform for political propaganda. Although theese afirmaitons may seem hard to believe or even far-fetched we must first understand how cartoons indirectly shape society. Why is animaiton, in fact, so noteworthy? First of all, we must realize that wether we like it or not, the vast majority of children grow along their favourite cartoon characters. What a child sees at a young age ultimately models the person he will become when he is an adult, in light of this, it becomes clear just how much power lies in the animators pencil tip. Moreover, behind the funny moving pictures we have all experienced at some point in our lives lies a billion dollar industry. A special academy award is given to the best animation each year and many animaiton films earn millions of dollars in the box office, for example, Shrek 2, The Lion King and Toy Story 3 all earned over 400 million dollars. Understandably, we can estimate that a considerable part of yearly movie revenues are due to animated features. And there are even more ways in which cartoons influence both society and economy, in almost unthinkable ways. To witness one of these incredible outcomes we could travel deep into the heart of the Wild West, in Crystal City, Texas, USA where one could see Popeye the Sailorman's statue proudly watching over the city center. The obvious question is: "Why would someone build such a statue?" and the answer lies somewhere during the Great Depression, when the city's dominant spinach industry collapsed. That's until Popeye arrived saving not only his girlfriend Olive, but also the local Texan farmers, erecting spinach sails to over 10,000 cans a day. In conclusion, I strongly believe that the miraculous world of animation witholds much more than meets the eye, thus getting an inside on who it evolved and how it works might make us really realize just how important it is to the world and even to us.

I. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step

I.1. General perspective: the forerunners of modern animation
Numerous devices which successfully displayed animated images were introduced well before the advent of the motion picture. These devices were used to entertain, amaze and sometimes even frighten people. The majority of these devices didn't project their images and accordingly could only be viewed by a single person at any one time. For this reason they were considered toys rather than being a large scale entertainment indutry like later animation. Many of these devices are still built by and for film students being taught the basic principles of animation.

I.2. The magic lantern

The magic lantern is an early predecessor of the modern day projector. It consisted of a translucent oil painting, a simple lens and a candle or oil lamp. In a darkened room, the image would appear projected onto an adjacent flat surface. It was often used to project demonic, frightening images in order to convince people that they were witnessing the supernatural. Some slides for the lanterns contained moving parts which makes the magic lantern the earliest known example of projected animation. The origin of the magic lantern is debated, but in the 15th century the Venetian inventor Giovanni Fontana published an illustration of a device which projected the image of a demon in his Liber Instrumentorum. The earliest known actual magic lanterns are usually credited toChristiaan Huygens or Athanasius Kircher.

I.3. Thaumatrope

The phenakistoscope was an early animation device. It was invented in 1831 simultaneously by the Belgian Joseph Plateau and the Austrian Simon von Stampfer. It consists of a disk with a series of images, drawn on radii evenly spaced around the center of the disk. Slots are cut out of the disk on the same radii as the drawings, but at a different distance from the center. The device would be placed in front of a mirror and spun. As the phenakistoscope is spun, a viewer would look through the slots at the reflection of the drawings which would only become visible when a slot passes by the viewer's eye.This created the illusion of animation.

I.4.Zoetrope

The zoetrope concept was suggested in 1834 by William George Horner, and from the 1860s marketed as the zoetrope. It operates on the same principle as the phenakistoscope. It was a cylindrical spinning device with several frames of animation printed on a paper strip placed around the interior circumference. There are vertical slits around the sides through which an observer can view the moving images on the opposite side when the cylinder spins. As it spins the material between the viewing slits moves in the opposite direction of the images on the other side and in doing so serves as a rudimentary shutter. The zoetrope had several advantages over the basic phenakistoscope. It didn't require the use of a mirror to view the illusion, and because of its cylindrical shape it could be viewed by several people at once. In China around 180 AD the prolific inventor Ting Huan () invented a device similar to the modern zoetrope. It was made of translucent paper or mica panels and was operated by being hung over a lamp so that vanes at the top would rotate as they came in contact with the warm air currents rising from the lamp. It has been stated that this rotation, if it reached the ideal speed triggered the same illusion of quick animation as the later zoetrope, but since there was no "shutter" (the slots in a zoetrope), the effect was in fact simply a series of horizontally drifting figures, with no true animation.

I.5.The flip book

The first flip book was patented in 1868 by John Barnes Linnett as the kineograph. A flip book is just a book with particularly springy pages that have an animated series of images printed near the unbound edge. A viewer bends the pages back and then rapidly releases them one at a time so that each image

viewed springs out of view to momentarily reveal the next image just before it does the same. They operate on the same principle as the phenakistoscope and the zoetrope what with the rapid replacement of images with others, but they create the illusion without any thing serving as a flickering shutter as the slits had in the previous devices. They accomplish this because of the simple physiological fact that the eye can focus more easily on stationary objects than on moving ones. Flip books were more often cited as inspiration by early animated filmmakers than the previously discussed devices which didn't reach quite as wide of an audience.In previous animation devices the images were drawn in circles which meant diameter of the circles physically limited just how many images could reasonably be displayed. While the book format still brings about something of a physical limit to the length of the animation, this limit is significantly longer than the round devices. Even this limit was able to be broken with the invention of the mutoscope in 1894. It consisted of a long circularly bound flip book in a box with a crank handle to flip through the pages.

II.First installments and the silent era

II.1. How it all began

The first film that was recorded on standard picture film and included animated sequences was the 1900 Enchanted Drawing, which was followed by the first entirely animated film - the 1906 Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by J. Stuart Blackton, and is because of that considered the father of American animation. In Europe, the French artist, mile Cohl, created the first animated film using what came to be known as traditional animation creation methods - the 1908 Fantasmagorie. The film largely consisted of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There were also sections of live action where the animators hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look. The more detailed hand-drawn animations, requiring a team of animators drawing each frame manually with detailed backgrounds and characters, were those directed by Winsor McCay, a successful newspaper cartoonist, including the 1911 Little Nemo, the 1914 Gertie the Dinosaur, and the 1918 The Sinking of the Lusitania. During the 1910s, the production of animated short films, typically referred to as "cartoons", became an industry of its own and cartoon shorts were produced for showing in movie theaters. The most successful producer at the time was John Randolph Bray, who, along with animator Earl Hurd, patented the cel animation process which dominated the animation industry for the rest of the decade.

II.2.The silent era

Cartoons at the time were both seen as and presented as moving comic strips, sometimes even incorporating Speech Bubbles for their dialog. Fantasy was in full vogue during this period, but it tended to have a dull, heavy handed and literal minded feeling to it, not helped by the primitive, stiff animation, glacial pacing and floaty motion. And because animation was so experimental at the time in its early stages, this resulted in quite a few instances of Deranged Animation, as animators experimented with the medium. Max and Dave Fleischer actually got their start off in this era, with their Out of the Inkwell series, starring Koko the Clown. During this time, the most prominent animation house was the studio of J.R. Bray, who produced many hit series such as "Colonel Heeza Liar" and "Bobby Bumps".

Walt Disney got off to a brief start in this era with his doomed Laff-O-Grams studios and Live Action/Animation shorts collectively called The Alice Comedies, but he finally found success later at Universal Studios with his character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. However, after losing Oswald and most of his animation staff over a contractual dispute, Disney quickly left Universal and formed his own studio. He and his friend Ub Iwerks ended up creating their own Captain Ersatz for Oswald:Mickey Mouse. However, the first two shorts, Plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho, were not particularly well received...and then came along Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to have sound. Also, contrary to what is generally believed, Steamboat Willie was not the first sound cartoon-the Flieschers had pioneered sound cartoons as early as the mid 1920s, with their film Mother Mother Pin A Rose on me, and not long before Steamboat Willie came out, Paul Terry, then an employee of Van Beuren Studios, made a synchronized sound cartoon called Dinnertime. However, Steamboat Willie was the first sound cartoon that actually took genuine advantage of what could be done with sound in a cartoon (and reportedly, Walt Disney saw Dinnertime himself and proclaimed it "terrible."). Naturally, the silent age came to a screeching halt with the rise of sound technology in the late 1920s. Disney and many other studios quickly worked to take advantage of the new technology, while former stars like Felix the Cat attempted to make the jump to sound film and failed miserably, quickly fading off into obscurity until many years later, with an ill-fated Golden Age revival during the 1930s and the iconic TV series which debuted in the late 1950s.

This era was succeeded by the far better-known Golden Age of Animation, which would last even longer and become even more influential and recognized than this era ever was. Cartoons at the time were both seen as and presented as moving comic strips, sometimes even incorporating Speech Bubbles for their dialog. Fantasy was in full vogue during this period, but it tended to have a dull, heavy handed and literal minded feeling to it, not helped by the primitive, stiff animation, glacial pacing and floaty motion. And because animation was so experimental at the time in its early stages, this resulted in quite a few instances of Deranged Animation, as animators experimented with the medium. Max and Dave Fleischer actually got their start off in this era, with their Out of the Inkwell series, starring Koko the Clown. During this time, the most prominent animation house was the studio of J.R. Bray, who produced many hit series such as "Colonel Heeza Liar" and "Bobby Bumps". Walt Disney got off to a brief start in this era with his doomed Laff-O-Grams studios and Live Action/Animation shorts collectively called The Alice Comedies, but he finally found success later at

Universal Studios with his character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. However, after losing Oswald and most of his animation staff over a contractual dispute, Disney quickly left Universal and formed his own studio. He and his friend Ub Iwerks ended up creating their own Captain Ersatz for Oswald: Mickey Mouse. However, the first two shorts, Plane Crazy and Gallopin' Gaucho, were not particularly well received...and then came along Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon to have sound. Also, contrary to what is generally believed, Steamboat Willie was not the first sound cartoon-the Flieschers had pioneered sound cartoons as early as the mid 1920s, with their film Mother Mother Pin A Rose on menote , and not long before Steamboat Willie came out, Paul Terry, then an employee of Van Beuren Studios, made a synchronized sound cartoon called Dinnertime. However, Steamboat Willie was the first sound cartoon that actually took genuine advantage of what could be done with sound in a cartoon (and reportedly, Walt Disney saw Dinnertime himself and proclaimed it "terrible."). Naturally, the silent age came to a screeching halt with the rise of sound technology in the late 1920s. Disney and many other studios quickly worked to take advantage of the new technology, while former stars like Felix the Cat attempted to make the jump to sound film and failed miserably, quickly fading off into obscurity until many years later, with an ill-fated Golden Age revival during the 1930s and the iconic TV series which debuted in the late 1950s. This era was succeeded by the far better-known Golden Age of Animation, which would last even longer and become even more influential and recognized than this era ever was.

III. The golden age of animation

III.1.General aspects
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the advent of sound cartoons in 1928 and continued into the late 1960s when theatrical animated shorts began losing to the new medium of television animation. Many popular characters emerged from this period, including Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Donald

Duck, Daffy Duck, Popeye, Tom and Jerry, Betty Boop, Woody Woodpecker, and the first animated adaptation of Superman. Feature length animation also began during this period, most notably with Walt Disney's first films: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi.

III.2. Feature lenght films through Walt Disney's perspective

In 1937, Walt Disney produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first American feature-length animated film. This was the culmination of four years of effort by Disney studios. Walt Disney was convinced that short cartoons would not keep his studio profitable in the long run, so he took what was seen as an enormous gamble. The critics predicted that Snow White would result in financial ruin for the studio. They said that the colors would be too bright for the audience and they would get sick of the gags and leave. However, the critics were proven wrong. Snow White was a worldwide box office success, and was universally acclaimed as a landmark in the development of animation as a serious art form. After the success of Snow White, Disney went on to produce Pinocchio, which was released in 1940. It was considered a stunning achievement both technically and artistically, costing twice as much as Snow White. However Pinocchio was not a financial success, since World War II (which began in 1939) had cut off 40% of Disney's foreign release market and although it was a moderate success in the United States, the domestic gross alone was not enough to make back its revenue. However, the film did receive very positive reviews and has made millions from subsequent re-releases. Later that year, Disney produced Fantasia. It originally started with the Mickey Mouse cartoon The Sorcerer's Apprentice in an attempt to recapture Mickey's popularity, which had sharply declined to Max Fleischer's Popeye and Disney's Donald Duck. In the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mickey Mouse was redesigned by Fred Moore. This redesign of Mickey is still in use today.The short featured no dialogue, only music which was conducted by Leopold Stokowski. When the budget for the short grew very expensive, Stokowski suggested to Disney that it could be a feature film with other pieces of classical music matched to animation. Disney agreed and production started. Fantasia would also become the first commercial film to be released in stereophonic sound. However, like Pinocchio, Fantasia was not a financial success. Fantasia was also the first Disney film not to be received well, receiving mixed reviews from the critics. It was looked down upon by music critics and audiences, who felt that Walt Disney was striving for something beyond his reach by trying to introduce mainstream animation to

abstract art, classical music, and "elite" subjects. However, the film would be reevaluated in later years and considered a significant achievement in the art of animation. In 1941 in order to compensate for the relative failure of Pinocchio and Fantasia, Disney produced a low-budget feature film, Dumbo. Just a few days after rough animation was complete on Dumbo, the Disney animators' strike broke out. This was caused by the Screen Cartoonists' Guild (which had been formed in 1938), who severed many ties between Walt Disney and his staff, while encouraging many members of the Disney studio to leave and seek greener pastures. Later that year, Dumbo became a big success, the first time since Snow White. The critically acclaimed film brought in much-needed revenue and kept the studio afloat. A few months after Dumbo was released, the United States entered the war after Pearl Harbor was attacked. This caused the mobilization of all movie studios (including their cartoon divisions) to produce propaganda material to bolster public confidence and encourage support for the war effort. The war (along with the strike) shook Walt Disney's empire, as the US Army had seized Disney's studio as soon as the US entered World War II in December 1941. Due to this, Disney put the feature films Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Wind in the Willows, Song of the South, Mickey and the Beanstalk and Bongo on hold until the war was over. The only feature film that was allowed to continue production was Bambi, which was released in 1942. Bambi was ground-breaking in terms of animating animals realistically. However, due to the war Bambi failed at the box-office and received mixed reviews from the critics. This was to be short lived as it grossed a considerable amount of money in the 1947 re-release. Disney was now fully committed to the war and contributed by producing propaganda shorts and a feature film entitled Victory Through Air Power. Victory Through Air Power was a box office failure and the studio lost around $500,000 as a result. The required propaganda cartoon shorts were also not as popular as Disney's regular shorts, and by the time the Army ended its stay at Disney Studios when the war ended in 1945, Disney struggled to restart his studio, and had a low amount of cash on hand. Further Disney feature films of the 1940s were modestly budgeted collections of animated short segments put together to make a feature film. These began with Saludos Amigos in 1942 and continued during the war with The Three Caballeros in 1944 and after the war with Make Mine Music in 1946, Fun and Fancy Free in 1947, Melody Time in 1948 and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad in 1949. For the feature films Mickey and the Beanstalk, Bongo and Wind in the Willows, he condensed them into the package films Fun and Fancy Free and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad since Walt feared that the low-budget animation would not become profitable.The most ambitious Disney film of this period was the 1946 film Song of the South, a film blending live-action and animation

which drew criticism in later years for accusations of racial stereotyping. In 1950, Disney produced Cinderella. Cinderella was an enormous success, becoming the highest grossing film of 1950, and became Disney's most successful film since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Disney's first single narrative feature film since Bambi. Disney also started producing full live-action films beginning with Treasure Island in 1950. He also had been creating nature documentaries since Seal Island in 1948 and started broadcasting on television with his One Hour in Wonderland special in 1951. Due to this, Walt Disney was needed on several different units at one time and was spending less time in the animation department. However, he never lost interest in animation and was always present at story-meetings; there they needed him the most.In 1951, he released Alice in Wonderland, a project he had been working on since the late 1930s and had shelved during the war. Alice in Wonderland was only moderately successful and received mixed reviews from the critics. However in 1953 he released Peter Pan, which, like Alice in Wonderland, had been in production since the late 1930s, early-1940s and was shelved during the war. However unlike Alice, Peter Pan was a big success both critically and financially. When Disney's contract with RKO expired at the end of 1953, instead of renewing it as usual Disney was concerned about the instability of RKO (due to owner Howard Hughes' increasingly erratic control of the studio) and started distributing its own films through its newly created Buena Vista Distribution subsidiary. This allowed a higher budget for shorts and features than the last few years of cartoons made for RKO dictated, which made it possible to make some of the cartoons in the new CinemaScope format. However, the budget per short was nowhere near as high as it had been in the 1940s as Disney had been focusing more on live action, television, and feature animation and less on short animation. In 1953, shortly after the switch from RKO to Buena Vista, Disney released its final Mickey Mouse short, The Simple Things. From there, the studio produced fewer animated shorts by the year until the animated shorts division was eventually closed in 1956. After that, any future short cartoon work was done through the feature animation division. In 1955 he created Lady and the Tramp, the first animated film in CinemaScope. Upon building Disneyland in 1955, Walt Disney regained a huge amount of popularity among the public, and turned his focus at producing his most ambitious movie: Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty was filmed in Super Technirama 70 mm film and in stereophonic sound like Fantasia. Sleeping Beauty also signaled a change in the style of drawing, with cartoony and angular characters; taking influence from United Productions of America. Although Sleeping Beauty was the second-highest grossing film of 1959 (just

behind Ben-Hur), the film went over budget, costing 6 million dollars, and the film failed to make back its expenditure. The studio was in serious debt and had to cut the cost of animation. In 1960, this resulted in Disney inventing Xerography, that replaced the traditional hand-inking. The first feature film that used Xerox cels was 101 Dalmatians in 1961. It was a huge success; however, the Xerox resulted in films with a "sketchier" look and lacked the quality of the hand-inked films. According to Floyd Norman, who was working at Disney at the time, it felt like the end of an era. On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died of lung cancer. The last film he was involved in was The Jungle Book, released a year after his death. After Walt Disney's death, the animated films produced by the Disney company were only moderately successful. The animation department did not fully recover until the late 1980s and early 1990s with the Disney Renaissance.

III.3. Warner Bros.

In 1929 former Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising made a cartoon entitled Bosko, the Talk-Ink Kid, and tried to sell it to a distributor in 1930. Warner Bros. who had previously tried an unsuccessful attempt to set up a cartoon studio in New York in order to compete with Disney, agreed to distribute the series. Under producer Leon Schlesinger's guide Harman and Ising created Looney Tunes (the title being variation on Disney's Silly Symphonies) starring their character Bosko. A second Harman-Ising series, Merrie Melodies, followed in 1931. Both series showed the strong influence of the early Disney films. After disputes over money, Harman-Ising parted company with Schlesinger in 1933, taking Bosko with them. Schlesinger began his own cartoon operation under the new name Leon Schlesinger Productions, hiring Harman-Ising animator Friz Freleng and several others to run the studio. Schlesinger created a Bosko clone known as Buddy and answered to Disney's use of color in Silly Symphonies cartoons in 1934, and began making all future Merrie Melodies cartoons in color. However since Disney had an exclusive deal with Technicolor, Schlesinger was forced to use Cinicolor and Two Strip Technicolor until 1935 when Disney's contract with Technicolor expired. In a 1935 Merry Melody directed by Friz Freeling entitled I Haven't Got a Hat was the first screen appearance of Porky Pig. Also in 1935, Schlesinger hired a new animation director who proceeded to revitalize the studio: Tex Avery. Schlesinger put Avery in charge of the low-budget Looney Tunes in a low run-down old building the animators named Termite Terrice. Under Avery, Porky Pig would

replace the Buddy series and become the first Warner Bros. character to achieve star power. Also at Termite Terrice animator Bob Clampett redesigned Porky from a fat, chubby pig to a more cute and childlike character. Unlike the other cartoon producers at the time, Avery had no intention of competing with Disney, but instead brought a new wacky, zany style of animation to the studio that would increase the Warner Bros. cartoons' popularity in the crowded marketplace. This was firmly established in 1937 when Tex Avery directed Porky's Duck Hunt. During production of the short lead animator Bob Clampett elaborated the exit of the Duck character by having him jump up and down on his head, flip around and holler off into the sunset. This created the character of Daffy Duck. After Daffy Duck was created, he would add even more success to Warner Bros cartoons and replaced Porky Pig as the studio's most popular animated character, and Bob Clampett took over Termite Terrice, while Tex Avery took over the Merry Melodies department. The 1940 Academy Award-nominated cartoon A Wild Hare (directed by Avery) marked Bugs Bunny's official debut. Bugs Bunny quickly replaced Daffy as the studio's top star and by 1942 he had become the most popular character. Because of the success of Bugs, Daffy and Porky, the Schlesinger studio now had risen to new heights, and Bugs quickly also became the star of the color cartoons Merrie Melodies, which had previously been used for one-shot character appearances.By 1942 Warners' shorts had now surpassed Disney's in sales and popularity. After several disputes with Schlesinger, Avery left Warner Bros. and went to work at MGM. By this time Warners' cartoons top directors of the 1940s and 1950s were Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett. Their cartoons are now considered classics of the medium. They directed some of the most beloved animated shorts of all time, including (for Clampett) Porky in Wackyland, A Corny Concerto, The Great Piggy Bank Robbery, The Big Snooze, (for Freleng) You Ought to Be in Pictures, Little Red Riding Rabbit, Birds Anonymous, Knighty Knight Bugs, (for Jones) Duck Amuck, Duck Dodgers in the 24th Century, One Froggy Evening, and What's Opera, Doc?. After more than two decades at the top, Warner Bros shut down the original "Termite Terrace" studio in 1963 and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises assumed production of the shorts, licensed by Warner Bros. After DePatie-Freleng ceased production of Looney Tunes in 1967, Bill Hendricks was put in charge of production of the newly renamed Warner Bros.-Seven Arts animation studio, and hired veterans such as Alex Lovy and LaVerne Harding from the Walter Lantz studio, Volus Jones and Ed Solomon from Disney, Jaime Diaz who later worked on The Fairly OddParents as director, and David Hanan, who

previously worked on Roger Ramjet. Hendricks brought only three of the original Looney Tunes veterans to the studio such as Ted Bonniscken, Norman McCabe and Bob Givens. The studio's one shot cartoons from this era were critically acclaimed. Cool Cat, Merlin the Magic Mouse, Norman Normal and Chimp and Zee were praised as being highly creative and having extremely clever writing and design that compensated for the extremely low budgets the crew had to work with by this time. Alex Lovy left the studio in 1968 and Robert McKimson took over. McKimson mostly focused on the recurring characters Alex Lovy had created and two of his own creation, Bunny and Claude. The last of the original Looney Tunes shorts produced was Bugged by a Bee and the last Merrie Melodies short was Injun Trouble, which shares its name with another Looney Tunes short from 1938. The Warner Bros.-Seven Arts studio finally shut down in 1969. A decade later, after the success of the film, The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie, which consisted predominately of footage from the classic shorts by Jones, a new in-house studio to produce original animation opened its doors in 1980 named Warner Bros. Animation, which exists to this day.

III.4. World War 2 propaganda through animation

World War II changed the possibilities for animation. Prior to the war, animation was seen as a form of childish entertainment. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a turning point in its utility. On December 8, 1941, the U.S. Army began working with Walt Disney at his studio, stationing Army personnel there for the duration of the war. The Army and Disney set about making various types of films for several different audiences. Most films meant for the public included some type of propaganda, while films for the troops included training and education about a given topic. Films intended for the public were often meant to build morale. They allowed Americans to release their anger and frustration through ridicule and crude humor. Many films simply reflected the war culture and were pure entertainment. Others carried strong messages meant to arouse public involvement or set a public mood. Animation was co-opted in the 1940s for training purposes. Disney produced Four Methods of Flush Riveting for Lockheed Martin's engineers.The Army Air Force, Navy, and Bureau of Aeronautics also commissioned and supervised films. Animations were written to train pilots and ground crewmen about The Occluded Fronts, Thunderstorms, and The Warm Front. Because of the sensitive content displayed

in Aircraft Wood Repair, the word RESTRICTED was the first word displayed in the film which discussed the type of glue used for wooden aircraft.[Other films made to help train pilots included Theory of the C-1 AUTOPILOT: Part One Basic Principles which introduced pilots to the autopilot function which was new to aircraft at the time.Wings Engines Fuselage Tail was a short film that taught servicemen how to best identify aircraft quickly. The Navy did a similar film called The 3-Point System which trained servicemen how to identify U.S. cruisers.Rules of the Nautical Road was a naval training film geared towards officers that recreated a historical catastrophe, which was meant to encourage officers to study nautical rules and principles. The most elaborate training film, Disney's Stop That Tank!, was commissioned by the Canadian Directorate of Military Training. This 21-minute full-color cartoon was intended for Canadian infantrymen assigned the Boys anti-tank rifle. The first few minutes of the cartoon depict Hitler and his tanks being defeated by Allies using the new rifle. The film continues in a largely more serious vein, showing how the weapon is to be used and cleaned.

Animation was quickly appropriated for political campaigning. The United States Auto Workers commissioned Warner Brothers to produce Hell-Bent for Election, which supported Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidential bid. The film was so pertinent and even Socialist in nature, that theaters never showed this piece though it was shown to its own members at meetings and rallies. Education for Death was a very serious film that Disney produced. This cartoon was based on a best selling book Education for Death written by Gregor Ziemer . The film shows how a young boy in Nazi Germany is indoctrinated and brain washed at an early age and learns to follow and not think outside of what the government tells him. This short is both educational but also provides comedic relief by mocking Hitler. The film is both shocking in its content and despairing in its ending. The film begins with the narrator asking how Nazis are born and developed. The story takes the audience to the childs academic beginning in kindergarten. Child stories are often adapted to meet the state's needs so, characters and plot lines are often changed. In the story, the wicked witch is known as democracy, while sleeping beauty is Germany and the knight that saves her is played by Hitler. The cartoon depicts this story in a rather short fashion but also depicts the two main characters (Hitler and Germany) ridiculously. On a more serious note, the cartoon next shows the child and his schoolmates in a class giving the infamous Heil Hitler salute repeatedly. However, the young boy becomes sick and the narrator informs the audience that unless the child becomes better again he will be taken away, being denounced unfit and will never be heard from again. However, he does recover and returns to

school where he gives his daily pledge to fight, obey, and die for his Fuehrer. The boy answers a question incorrectly and is publicly humiliated. The lesson that the young boy learns later is that weakness is not to be tolerated and that the world belongs to the strong and brutal. The next few scenes show a book burning demonstration and other famous works being burned that are declared illegal by the state. Icons such as the Holy Bible are replaced with Mein Kampf and an image of the crucifix is replaced with a sword that has the Nazi swastika on it. Fast-forwarding a few years, the boy is older and is marching first as a teenage Hitler youth and then eventually as a soldier. The narrator ends the cartoon with the words, His education is complete, his education for death as a vast German army fades into a cemetery with crosses over thousands of graves.

IV. Televison and modern day animation

IV.1. Cartoon Network
On February 18, 1992, Turner Broadcasting System announced plans to launch the Cartoon Network as an outlet for Turner's considerable library of animation. The channel's launch occurred on October 1, 1992, and was hosted by the MGM cartoon character Droopy in a special event called Droopy's Guide to the Cartoon Network, during which the first cartoon on the network, Rhapsody Rabbit, was shown.Initial programming on the channel consisted exclusively of reruns of classic Warner Bros. cartoons (the pre-1950 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies), the 19331957 Popeye cartoons, MGM cartoons, and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. At first, cable providers in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and Detroit carried the channel.By the time the network launched, Cartoon Network had an 8,500-hour cartoon library. From its launch until 1995, the network's announcers said the network's name with the word "The" added before "Cartoon Network", thus calling the network "The Cartoon Network". By the time that the network debuted, Cartoon Network also operated a programming block (containing its cartoons) that aired on TNT, entitled "Cartoon Network on TNT". Cartoon Network was not the first cable channel to have relied on cartoons to attract an audience.

Nickelodeon had paved the way in the 1980s. On August 11, 1991, Nickelodeon had launched three "high-profile" animated series: Doug, Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy, further signifying the importance of cartoons in its programming. The Disney Channel and The Family Channel had also included animated shows as part of their programming schedules, as did USA Network, whose Cartoon Express was widely popular. In each of these cases, until October 1, 1992, cartoons were only broadcast during the morning or the early afternoon. Prime time and late night hours were reserved for live-action programs, following the assumption that television animation could only attract child audiences, while Cartoon Network was a 24-hour single-genre channel with animation as its main theme. Turner Broadcasting System had defied conventional wisdom before by launching CNN, a channel providing 24-hour news coverage. The concept was previously thought unlikely to attract a sufficient audience to be particularly profitable, however the CNN experiment had been successful and Turner hoped that Cartoon Network would also find success. Initially, the channel would broadcast cartoons 24 hours a day. Most of the short cartoons were aired in half-hour or hour-long packages, usually separated by character or studio Down Wit' Droopy D aired old Droopy Dog shorts, The Tom and Jerry Show presented the classic cat-and-mouse team, and Bugs and Daffy Tonight provided classic Looney Tunes shorts. Late Night Black and White showed early black-and-white cartoons (mostly from the Fleischer Studios and Walter Lantz cartoons from 1930s), and ToonHeads would show three shorts with a similar theme and provide trivia about the cartoons.There was also an afternoon cartoon block called High Noon Toons, which was hosted by cowboy hand puppets (an example of the simplicity and imagination the network had in its early years). The majority of the classic animation that was shown on Cartoon Network no longer airs on a regular basis, with the exception of Tom and Jerry and Looney Tunes. A challenge for Cartoon Network was to overcome its low penetration of existing cable systems. When launched on October 1, 1992, the channel was only carried by 233 cable systems. However, it benefited from package deals. New subscribers to sister channels TNT and TBS could also get access to Cartoon Network through such deals. The high ratings of Cartoon Network over the following couple of years led to more cable systems including it. By the end of 1994, Cartoon Network had become "the fifth most popular cable channel in the United States" For the first few years of Cartoon Network's existence, programming meant for the channel would also be simulcast on TBS and/or TNT in order to increase the shows' (and Cartoon Network's) exposure; examples include The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, Cartoon Planet, SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron and 2 Stupid Dogs. The network's first exclusive original show was The Moxy Show, an animation anthology series first

airing in 1993. The first series produced by Cartoon Network was Space Ghost Coast to Coast in 1994, but the show mostly consisted of "recycled animation cels" from the archives of Hanna-Barbera, being an ironic deconstruction of a talk show. It featured live-action guests, mostly consisting of celebrities which were past their prime or counterculture figures. A running gag was that the production cost was dubbed "minimal". The series found its audience among young adults who appreciated its "hip" perspective. Kevin Sandler considered Space Ghost Coast to Coast instrumental in establishing Cartoon Network's appeal to older audiences. Space Ghost, a 1960s superhero by Hanna-Barbera, was recast as the star of a talk show parody. This was arguably the first time the network revived a "classic animated icon" in an entirely new context for comedic purposes. Grown-ups who had ceased enjoying the original takes on the characters could find amusement in the "new ironic and self-referential context" for them. Promotional shorts such as the "Scooby-Doo Project", a parody of the The Blair Witch Project, gave similar treatments to the Scooby gang. However, there were less successful efforts at such revivals. A Day in the Life of Ranger Smith and Boo Boo Runs Wild (1999) were short cartoons featuring new takes on Yogi Bear's supporting cast by John Kricfalusi. Their style of humor, sexual content and break in tone from the source material was rather out of place among the rest of the Cartoon Network shows, and the network rarely found a place for them in its programming. In 1994, Hanna-Barbera's new division Cartoon Network Studios was founded and started production on What a Cartoon! (also known as World Premiere Toons). This show debuted in 1995, offering original animated shorts commissioned from Hanna-Barbera and various independent animators. The network promoted the series as an attempt to return to the "classic days" of studio animation, offering full animator control, high budgets, and no limited animation. The project was spearheaded by Cartoon Network executives, plus John Kricfalusi and Fred Seibert. Kricfalusi was the creator of The Ren & Stimpy Show and served as an advisor to the network, while Seibert was formerly one of the driving forces behind Nickelodeon's Nicktoons and would go on to produce the similar animation anthology series Oh Yeah! Cartoons and Random! Cartoons. Cartoon Network was able to assess the potential of certain shorts to serve as pilots for spin-off series and signed contracts with their creators to create ongoing series.Dexter's Laboratory was the most popular short series according to a vote held in 1995 and eventually became the first spin-off of What a Cartoon! in 1996. Three more series based on shorts debuted in 1997: Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken and I Am Weasel (the latter two as segments of the same show; I Am Weasel was later spun-off into a separate show). These were followed by The Powerpuff Girls in 1998 and concluded with Courage the

Cowardly Dog and Mike, Lu & Og in 1999. The unrelated series Ed, Edd n Eddy was also launched in 1999, creating a line-up of critically acclaimed shows. Many of these series premiered bearing the "Cartoon Cartoons" brand, airing throughout the network's schedule and prominently on Cartoon Cartoon Fridays, which became the marquee night for premieres of new episodes and series beginning on June 11, 1999.

IV.2. Modern Feature Films

At the start of the 1980s, Walt Disney Productions 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 liveaction/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 ($41.1 million in today's dollars) entitled Tron. While Disney's stock dropped four percent after a screening for unenthusiastic investment analysts, and in spite of only moderate grosses at the box office, Tron received enthusiastic praise from film critic Roger Ebert, became a cult favorite and turned outmany years laterto have a greater influence on animation (at Disney and elsewhere) than expected. In 1984, Disney became the target of a corporate raid by 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 in order 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. 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, another film featuring mice characters that competed directly with Mouse Detective in theaters. In 1988, the studio collaborated with Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, producing Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a comedic detective caper that mixed live action and animation while paying homage to the Golden Age of Cartoons. Disney characters appeared with characters from Warner Bros., MetroGoldwyn-Mayer, Universal Pictures and other rival studios for the first time in animation history. The film was a huge box-office success, winning four Academy Awards, reviving interest in animation made for theaters, and popularizing the in-depth study of the history and techniques of animation. 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. Additionally, the release of many older Disney features and short cartoons on home video, and the 1983 launch of the Disney Channel, renewed interest in the studio. Disney followed up Who Framed Roger Rabbit and its commercially successful 1988 fully animated feature Oliver & Company with The Little Mermaid, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale with songs by Broadway composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman. Mermaid was a huge critical and commercial success, won two Academy Awards for its song score, and became the first of a series of highly successful new Disney animated features. 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 ($49.9 million in today's dollars), not even equalling the take of the original 1977 film. However, the films that followed it, Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, won rave reviews, received multiple Oscars, and topped the box office charts. 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 animated feature to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, followed by 2009's Up.

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 ($517 million in today's dollars). As of 2010, The Lion King ranked as the 22nd highest grossing motion picture of all time in the United States.Subsequent Disney films such as Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan and Tarzan were box office and critical successes as well, albeit modestly so when compared to The Lion King. 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 Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, and Home on the Range failed to meet the critical and commercial expectations set by the early 1990s phenomena, in spite of exceptions such as Lilo & Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove. At the same time, the high level of popular acclaim bestowed upon Toy Story, the first film animated entirely using computer-generated imagery (CGI), sparked an industry trend. Based on the commercial success of Pixar's computer-generated animated films and other 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 wantedso it ceased producing traditional two-dimensional 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." He then launched the internet site SaveDisney.com in an attempt to preserve the integrity of the company and to oust Eisner, who resigned in 2005 after public opinion turned against him. 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.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can understand that there is far more to animation than meets the eye. Animation, whether in time of peace or war consistently modeled the minds of young people, changing society in several ways. From the silent era to modern days, animation was a consistent part of people's life. Today, animation isn't only for children anymore and shows like Family Guy or South Park are broadcasted for a more mature audience. What is also fascinating is that, unlike the film industry, cartoon stars rarely die. Actually, they die quite often in their movies, but they mantain their "star" status for decades, Mickey Mouse, Spiderman or Bugs Bunny are still well known and still featured in many installments to they series. Furthermore, we can realize that nowdays animation is an industry. On an yearly basis, revenues for animated movies top the billion dollar mark. Moreover, cartoons are also broadcasted worldwide by television providers on channels like Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon or Boomerang. Finally, we must recognize that animation is a significant part of our life, whether we like it or not. Today, both animated feature films and cable network animation are a consistent part of young people's

lifes, modeling them in what they will become tomorrow. It was used both as means of propaganda during World War 2 and changed people's life by going as far as stimulating economies around the world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thomas, Bob, The Art of Animation 1958 McLaughlin, Dan. "A Rather Incomplete but Still Fascinating History of Animation" Maltin, Leonard, and Jerry Beck. Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980 Crafton, Donald Before Mickey : the animated film, 1898-1928 Dobson, Nichola, Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_animation http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Golden_Age_of_American_animation.html http://video.mit.edu/watch/history-of-animation-3391/

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