Animation: How it has evolved in the past one hundred plus years.

713 Words2 Pages

Although Steamboat Willie is the most popular sound cartoon, it is not the first. The Fleischer Brothers and animator Paul Terry have already accomplished integrating sound into cartoons. However the idea of a sound cartoons didn't sit very well with distributors and theater owners who thought it would never become popular. Thus Terry's and Fleischer's shorts didn't achieve the popularity that Steamboat Willie did two years after their releases. Steamboat Willie, however, was originally animated as a silent feature and it wasn't the first short containing the world famous Mickey Mouse character. There were a few shorts containing Mickey that were created before hand but never released to the public till after Steamboat Willie's success. Mickey Mouse also was the creation of Walt's partner UB Iwerks and was designed after Universal took the rights to their previous character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Disney did not see a return of Oswald until 2006 when they traded with Universal for the rights to the character back, over 80 years since they lost him.
After the success of Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse was now the number 1 cartoon star of the time putting stars like Felix the Cat into the background. This also led to the golden age of cartoons where many big cartoon companies would sprout. Despite the companies like Fleischer Studios and Winsor McCay's company falling during this period of time, companies like Warner Brothers, UPA, Halas & Batchlor, and Disney find their roots tied deeply in the cartoon golden age. Innovations like the Multiplane camera, rotoscoping, and technicolor were improved upon.
The studio UPA(United Productions of America) created a style of animation that helped animation survive the years after the golden...

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Lisa Sciacca
Burriville High School
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(401) 568-1310 sciaccal@bsd-ri.net Staff at Full Sail University
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Visit during Behind the Scenes Tour on Sunday December 8th

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