animation

Movement given to an inanimate object, such as a drawing, puppet, or modelling clay; also, a cartoon, or animated film, in which a drawing or object is photographed in a series, with small changes of movement, usually by exposing the film frame by frame. Run at speed, the contents of the film are given the illusion of movement. More recently, computer techniques have been used to produce animation, as traditional animation is extremely time-consuming. The most celebrated and key exponent of cartoon animation was Walt Disney, who inspired the first wave of the large Japanese animation industry. However, in a reaction against his representational (realistic) style, North American rivals and Eastern European practitioners subsequently produced a more graphic approach.

In the USA Winsor McCay, creator of the newspaper cartoon hero Little Nemo, showed a series of ten animated films between 1911 and 1921 featuring Gertie the Dinosaur, which pioneered the modern cartoon film.

Japanese anime took off with the TV series Tetsuwan atomu/Astro Boy (1963-67) by Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989). By 1992 about 40 animated weekly TV series were produced in Japan, as well as feature-length films for video release. The former are mainly family-oriented; the latter, such as Akira (1989) by Katsuhiro Otomo, usually action-packed and aimed at youths. Ghost in the Shell (1995) by Mamuro Oshii, set in the year 2029 and based on a comic by Masamune Shirow, was given an international cinema release.

The first frame-by-frame animation film is thought to be J S Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906). In France Emil Cohl began producing vivacious cartoons such as Fantasmagorie (1908) and Les Joyeux Microbes (1909).