Home > Modern animation of the United States
1 1988 to present
1.1 The Return of Disney
By the mid- 1980s, the American animation industry had sunk to a decrepit state. Toy commercials masquerading as entertainment dominated the afternoon cartoon shows and Saturday morning cartoons, with the only experimentation and development in animation taking place in small, independent animated cartoons. Animated feature films still appeared occasionally in theaters, but the glory days of old had disappeared. Even giant Disney, which barely fought off a corporate takeover attempt in the 1980s, was considering abandoning the production of feature-length animated films.
Film fans, audiences, critics, and animators alike were all taken by surprise when the long-awaited renaissance of animation began with the most ancient, conservative, and mainstream cartoon producer: Disney.
Disney underwent a company shakeup in the 1980s, and new chairman Michael Eisner got the company back on its feet by returning the company to its roots and revitalizing its movie studios. With great fanfare, in 1988 the studio collaborated with Steven Spielberg and produced the animated feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, directed by Robert Zemeckis. The movie was a runaway box-office smash, and it provided the shot in the arm to the animation industry that was so desperately needed at the time. Not only did Roger Rabbit make a pile of money for Disney, it also sparked a popularization of classical animation that continues to the present day. The history of animation suddenly became a subject for serious scholarly inquiry (as well as animation fandom). 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.
Disney followed up Who Framed Roger Rabbit with The Little Mermaid, the first of a series of new animated feature films that seemed to re-capture the magic of the golden days of Walt Disney himself. The studio invested heavily in the new technology of computer animationComputer animation is the art of creating moving images via the use of computers. It is a subfield of computer graphics and animation. Increasingly it is created by means of 3D computer graphics, though 2D computer graphics are still widely used. Sometime to beef up its animation, producing animated extravaganzas such as Beauty and the BeastBeauty and the Beast is a 1991 animated film produced by Disney which tells an adaptation of the well-known fairy tale story of a beautiful woman kept in a castle by a horrific monster. It was the first animated picture to be nominated for the Academy Awa and AladdinAladdin (first released on November 11, 1992) is an animated Disney movie telling a version of the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp from The Arabian Nights. As is usual with Disney film adaptations, many aspects of the traditional story were changed fo that drew in audiences of the sort not seen in decades, while providing a feast for the eyes unmatched since the 1940sCenturies: 19th century 20th century 21st century Decades: 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s Years: 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 Events and trends Technology First nuclear bomb First cruise missile, the. The peak of Disney's success was in 19941994 is a common year starting on Saturday, and was designated the International year of the Family''. Events January events January 1 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) goes into effect January 6 Nancy Kerrigan is clubbed on the right leg by an when their film, The Lion KingThe Lion King is the Walt Disney Company's 32nd animated film, and one of its most successful. It was originally released on June 15, 1994 and later re-released in IMAX format in 2003. The movie is about a young lion cub named Simba who learns about his p, surpassed the wildest hopes of the studio to become one of the most successful films of all time.
Disney also made new inroads in the long-neglected area of TV animated seriesAn animated series or cartoon series is a television series produced by means of animation. A note on usage: The duration of an individual episode varies from series to series. While some series may be produced as complete half hour programs, many cartoon. With the success of its TV cartoon series The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Gummi Bears, as well with Duck Tales the "new" Disney made its mark in TV cartoons. This was the first animated TV series to invest a lot of money and make it back through syndication and repeats, thus affording high-quality animation for TV. There followed a series of acclaimed syndicated series in the early to mid 1990s with some critics singling out Gargoyles as Disney's most ambitious and artistically successful TV animation project.
