This article explains the history of American animation from the late 1980s to the beginning of the 21st century. This period has been called the “renaissance” of American animation. During this time, many large American entertainment firms reformatted and re-energized their animation departments after the decline in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Since 1988 to the Present
Disney returns
The American animation industry was in disgrace by the mid-80’s. Toy advertisements masquerading cartoons were the mainstay of Saturday morning and evening entertainment. The only exception was independent developers. Sometimes, animated films were shown in the theaters. But the glory of old was gone. Disney, the giant animation studio that had battled a corporate takeover in the 1980’s, considered abandoning animated feature films.
Disney, the world’s oldest and most conservative company, surprised both the animated and enthusiastic audiences, as well as the critics.
Disney underwent a radical change in 1980, when its new CEO Michael Eisner relocated the company to his feet. The company returned to its roots, revitalizing its studies. In 1988, the study produced the animated film Who Framed Roger Rabbit directed by Robert Zemeckis with Steven Spielberg. The film was a huge success and gave the animation industry much-needed push at that time. Roger Rabbit was not only a huge success for Disney but it also helped to launch the classic animation which continues today. The history of animated films (and its fans) became a subject of study. After decades of being ignored by the industry and audiences, several directors and business legends, like Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng, were thrust into the spotlight.
Disney has continued to build on the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The Little Mermaid was the first in a series that seemed to recapture Walt Disney’s golden age. For such projects, the studio invested heavily in computer animation technology. It was able to produce super-productions, like “Beauty and the Beast”, “Aladdin”, which brought in audiences not seen for decades. Once also provided a visual feast not seen since the 1940s. The Lion King, a 1994 Disney film that was a huge hit and exceeded all expectations for the study, reached its peak in 1994. Disney’s later films, such as “Pocahontas”, “The Hunchback Of Notre Dame”, Hercules”, “Mulan”, and “Tarzan”, were also blockbusters.
Disney has also made a significant impact on the previously neglected field of animated television series. The “new” Disney has made a mark on TV with shows such as “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh”, ‘The Adventures of the Gummi Bears Disney’ and Duck Adventures. Disney is able to produce high-quality animation through repetition and association. In the mid-nineties a series of large distribution was carried out, and some critics deemed “Gargoyles”, Disney’s animation project for TV that was most ambitious and artistically done. The soundtracks of the animated films played a major role in their success. Disney included big names from the music world, including Elton John, Luis Miguel, Ricky Martin, Christina Aguilera, Celine Dion, Ricardo Montaner, Jon Secada, among others.
Spielberg’s animation
Spielberg & Bluth
Steven Spielberg, meanwhile, was reviving animation in his own unique way. Spielberg, who was an amateur animator, also wanted to make high-quality animation. He worked with Don Bluth, a rival animation producer, on “Fievel and the New World.” Hollywood realized that Disney didn’t have a monopoly over animated films after the success of Bluth’s “In The Land” and this film. Fox Animation Studios, Disney’s competitor, and other Hollywood studios began producing their own animated films. However, they still tried to copy Disney’s 1997 Don Bluth film. “Anastasia”, which was produced by Fox Animation Studios, is cited as the movie that launched Fox Animation Studios. These studies, however, failed after “Anastasia”, and closed in 1998. Thalia was present at “Anastasia”, as she is in most Disney productions. She played the main theme in the versions of Spanish, English, and Portuguese.
Spielberg & Warner Bros.
Spielberg switched to television and produced “The Tiny Toon Adventures”, a high-quality animated series which paid homage the great cartoons from Termite terrace. The Tiny Toon Adventures had a high rating, thanks to the young viewers. This inspired Warner Bros. to revive his dying animation studio. Tiny Toon Steven Spielberg was continued with “Animaniacs”, and “Pinky and the Brain”. Warner Bros. was able to attract new viewers with the latter, as well as capturing the attention of both adults and adolescents.
Bakshi’s return
Ralph Bakshi is the director of “Fritz the Cat”, the original “Lord of the Rings”, and other innovative animated films. He returned to animation in the mid-80’s after a short break. He teamed up in 1985 with John Kricfalusi, the talented Canadian animator and legendary British band The Rolling Stones to create an animated music clip for “The Harlem Shuffle”. The video was finished by early 1986. The music video was not very interesting, but he created a team of production “Bakshi Animation”. The project continued, albeit briefly, with “The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse”. Bakshi & Co. worked on many projects towards the end of 1980, but their biggest project, “Cool World : a blonde in between two worlds”, premiered in 1992. The production went out of control and was severely criticized by everyone.
Outsourcing Animation
Outsourcing the heavy lifting of animation to animation houses cheaper in South and Southeast Asia is a major reason to increase the quality of American animated films gogoanime. This allows for a greater number of frames to be produced at comparatively low costs. In American offices, the scripts, character designs and storyboarding are done. The storyboard, color books and models are sent abroad. It can cause problems, because the final product cannot be completed until all the frames have been mailed back to the U.S. Despite budget cuts, foreign production houses are selected per episode or scene depending on the money available. There is a huge difference in the quality of each episode. It is especially evident in shows such as “Gargoyles”, “Batman: The Animated Series” where the characters can appear completely different between episodes, much to the dismay and frustration of the directors.
Adult Animation
The Simpsons HTML0
After a decade-long absence, a new generation of animated series focused on adults emerged in the 1990s. In 1989, a short animated based on “The Tracey Ullman Show” became the first animated prime-time series since “The Flintstones”, and captured a large audience. The first series to be a hit for Fox was “The Simpsons”. It caused little controversy, entered popular culture, and gained wide acceptance. In 2008, the “Simpsons” show no sign of slowing down and may surpass “Gunsmoke”, as the longest running fiction series in American television history. The Simpsons: The Movie, their first film was released in 2007. It is dubbed both in Spanish and Chinese.
Ren & Stimpy
Nickelodeon launched “The Ren and Stimpy Show” in 1991. “Ren and Stimpy,” a quirky cartoon series, was an outrage that broke all the rules of Saturday morning’s correct drawing style and favored the quirkiness of the old shorts. John Kricfalusi was a former animator who worked during the decline of Saturday morning and was heavily influenced by Bob Clampett’s classic work.
Spike & Mike
There was an experimental and strange movement that accompanied mainstream animation in the nineties. Craig Decker, Mike Gribble Spike and Mike Gribble Spike were the organizers of a 1989 short animation festival. The festival was originally held in San Diego. The Classic Festival of Animation was a collection of short thematic films that were shown in business and trade meetings across the country.
The majority of the collections consisted of Oscar-nominated films, student works from the Institute of the Arts California and experimental film work by the National Film Board of Canada. The first festival featured works by John Lasseter and Nick Park. Judge’s “Frog Baseball”, marked the debut of Beavis and Butthead characters in their franchise.
The festival was renamed Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation and became an underground movement of adult humor and subjects.
Adult Swimming
In 1994, Cartoon Network approved a new show called “Space Ghost”. It was broadcast coast to coast, with a postmodern twist, and featured live interviews of celebrities mixed with the original cartoon animation “Space Ghost.” Hanna-Barbera now owned by Cartoon Network produced the series. The practice of using old Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters in new productions was born. For example, the surreal “Underwater Laboratory 2021”, which is based on the early 70s cartoon short “Sealab 2020.” Harvey Birdman is an attorney on a mediocre hero, Birdman that was originally the star in Birdman and Galaxy Trio. Like many characters from the series, its customers were based on old Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
Independent animators began to benefit not only from large, old-fashioned animation files but also from digital technologies. Artists with the right technical skills can explore new forms and styles with more freedom. Digital manipulation and the aggressive use of new animation techniques have replaced traditional animation skills such as drawing and painting.
With these new shows, the American public, especially in areas that are influenced by the cultures on the Pacific Coast, started to adopt Japanese animation, or anime. The growing market of anime videos is a way to satisfy children and adolescents, as many Japanese series are translated into English. The first access to anime was through videos. However, as the genre became more mainstream, it began to appear in film stores across the U.S.
“Adult Swim”, a block for adults, is broadcast at the beginning of primetime by Cartoon Network. It is the leader in the adult industry with the most advanced technology. Adult Swim was originally broadcast on Sunday nights in 2006. It was on until 5:00 am every night, except for Friday. The series produced exclusively by Adult Swim as “The Brak Show”, “Aquateen Hunger Force” or “Tom Goes to the Mayor”, are surreal, bizarre and considered original. Adult Swim helped to save “Family Guy” by reissuing the series “Futurama”. It also releases a number of popular Anime Series such as “FLCL”, Lupin III, and “Inuyasha”.
Other Drawings for Adults
Animation for adults was also tried by other TV stations. MTV produced several animated shows for both young and adult audiences. “Liquid television” and “Beavis & Butthead” are two examples. The “Duckman Show” on USA Network has a cult audience. The most popular adult animated series in the 1990s was “South Park”, which debuted as an Internet cartoon pirate in 1996.
The faster the animation and the more clandestine it was, the more dominant the force of television animation became. This led to a frenetic and perhaps eschatological territory, as in “The Tick and Duckman.”
Ralph Bakshi, the adult animation pioneer, announced in 2005 that he was working on a new film called “The Last Days of Coney Island”, which he planned to finance and produce himself.
The Decline of Saturday Morning
The American animation industry was in a state of near coma during the past two decades. However, it experienced a rapid growth in 1990. A number of new studies were willing to take risks and find a wide range of markets in which to sell their talent. Animation is used for television commercials, music videos, and video games. Small animation studios competed with “Hanna-Barbera Productions”, the leading TV animation company.
Hanna-Barbera was unable to compete with new animations on the market. Hanna-Barbera was virtually alone in dominating the Saturday morning picture spectrum, which led to a decline in quality. In the 1990’s, Hanna-Barbera was unable to compete against “Fox Kids”, “WB Television Network”, and Warner Bros. Hanna-Barbera had no choice but to stay behind and be bought out by Turner Broadcasting.
Hanna-Barbera had a hard time adapting to all the changes in television. The “Big Three”, ABC, NBC, and CBS, found that their loyal audiences were being eroded due to competition from new channels. This included new strains of cable TV, such as Nickelodeon Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network. Video games and movies on video helped to change the market. For a while, NBC cartoons were all that was available. Disney bought the ABC and Disney turned on Saturday a series Disney animated productions.
The cable television cartoon was a success. Nickelodeon had cult favorites like “Rugrats”, “Ren and Stimpy,” Rocko’s Modern Life,” SpongeBob,” Invader Zim,” and “The Fairly OddParents.” Time Warner, a new Hanna-Barbera owner, focused the study on creating new cartoons for Cartoon Network. Hanna-Barbera brought in new blood and a whole new generation of Hanna-Barbera cartoons were born, including “Dexter’s Laboratory”, “Johnny Bravo”, “Cow and Chicken”, “Powerpuff Girls”, and ” Courage the Cowardly Dog “.
Each new animation wasn’t a goldmine. Disney’s animated films started to lose quality in late 1990 after Jeff Katzenberg, the producer left the studio to join Steven Spielberg and David Geffen at DreamWorks. In 1990, Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox released several animated films to try and imitate Disney’s success. However, as in 1930 and 1940 the Disney movies were dominant and the animations failed to catch up. Warner Bros had a series of box office failures. “Cats Do Not Dance”, “The Magic Sword”, and “The Iron Giant”, (the latter was praised by both critics and audience, but almost ignored by the majority) were all major failures. Warner Bros. tried to replicate the success of “Roger Rabbit”, to “Space Jam”, in an attempt to combine Bugs Bunny’s popularity with Michael Jordan.
The market trend for children was almost as prevalent as it had been a decade before. Toys dominated children’s programming on weekends in the late 90s and 2000s. The animation industry spent a lot of money on merchandise until the 2000s.
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