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Animation departments (or animation production departments) are the teams within a film studio that work on various aspects of animation such as storyboarding or 3D modeling. It can refer to a single department that handles animation as a whole or to multiple departments that handle specific tasks. It can also refer to a college department.
The following lists of animation studios presents current and former organizations similar to artists studios but principally dedicated to the production and distribution of animated films. Such studios may be actual production facilities or corporate entities.
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- Overview
- History
- Filmography
- References
Walt Disney Animation Studios (commonly abbreviated to Disney Animation or simply Disney) is The Walt Disney Company's flagship studio. Founded by Walt Disney and his older brother, Roy O. Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios was developed as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio after the closure of Disney's previous venture, Laugh-O-Gram Studio. It would later be renamed as the Walt Disney Studio, and then Walt Disney Productions, until being established as a subsidiary of what would become the greater Walt Disney Company following a major corporate restructuring in February 1986, under the name Walt Disney Feature Animation.
For over a century, Walt Disney Animation Studios has been the world's leading animation division. Several innovations that have been pioneered by the studio include sound cartoons in 1928, storyboarding and color cartoons in the 1930s, feature-length animated films by 1937, the Xerox process in 1961, and the CAPS system in the late 1980s. After numerous accolades for its features in the decades prior, in 1992, Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Several of the studio's more recent features, including Frozen and Zootopia, have become some of the highest-grossing films of all time with over one billion at the worldwide box office. The studio is also known for its musicals, several of which have garnered Academy Awards for Best Original Song—the first being "When You Wish Upon a Star" from 1940's Pinocchio, which serves as the anthem for the company as a whole.
Outside of feature films, the studio is most notable for introducing Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie on November 18, 1928. The inception of Mickey has been historically signified as the start of what is considered the Golden age of American animation. Today, the character serves as The Walt Disney Company's mascot, and one of the world's highest-grossing media franchises.
In 2020, Walt Disney Animation Studios announced that they would begin producing television series in-house, which was previously unprecedented, as the studio primarily produced short and feature-length films (in addition to occasional collaborations with other divisions of the company, such as Disney Parks, Experiences and Products).
The Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
In early 1923, Kansas City, Missouri animator Walt Disney created a short film entitled Alice's Wonderland, which featured child actress Virginia Davis interacting with animated characters. Film distributor Margaret J. Winkler contacted Disney with plans to distribute a whole series of Alice Comedies based upon Alice's Wonderland. The contract signed, Walt and his brother Roy Disney moved to Los Angeles. On October 16, 1923, they officially set up shop in their uncle Robert Disney's garage, marking the beginning of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio (currently Walt Disney Animation Studios). Within a few months, the company moved into the back of a realty office in downtown Los Angeles, where production continued on the Alice Comedies until 1927. In January 1926, the studio moved to a newly constructed studio facility on Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles. At the same time, Walt renamed the company Walt Disney Studio. After the end of the Alice Comedies, Disney developed an all-cartoon series for Winkler and Universal Pictures - Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Universal owned the rights to the titular character while Winkler Pictures served as the "middleman" between Disney and Universal. Disney only completed 27 Oswald shorts before losing the contract in March 1928, when Winkler's husband Charles Mintz hired away all of Disney's animators to start his own animation studio. Notable animators that left Disney include Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Robert McKimson, and Rollin Hamilton. Ub Iwerks was one of the few animators who stayed with Disney.
Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies
Following the loss of several animators, Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created Mickey Mouse. Disney's first sound film Steamboat Willie, a cartoon starring Mickey, was released on November 18, 1928. It was the third Mickey Mouse cartoon, behind Plane Crazy and The Gallopin' Gaucho. It was also the first cartoon to feature synchronized sound. Disney used Pat Powers' Cinephone system, created by Powers using Lee De Forest's Phonofilm system. Steamboat Willie premiered at B. S. Moss's Colony Theater in New York City, now The Broadway Theatre. A second Disney series of sound cartoons, the Silly Symphonies, debuted in 1929 with The Skeleton Dance. Each Silly Symphony was a one-shot cartoon centered around music or a particular theme. On December 16, 1929, Walt Disney Studio's name was changed to Walt Disney Productions, Ltd. and a few subsidiaries were established - Walt Disney Enterprises (for merchandising), Disney Film Recording Company, Ltd. (for music), and Liled Realty and Investment Company (for real estate). On September 29, 1938, the company and subsidiaries were combined to create a single company titled Walt Disney Productions. In 1930, disputes over finances between Disney and Powers led to Walt Disney Productions signing a new distribution contract with Columbia Pictures, and Powers signing away Ub Iwerks, who began producing cartoons at his own studio. In 1932, Disney signed an exclusive contract with Technicolor (through the end of 1935) to produce cartoons in color, beginning with Flowers and Trees (1932). At the same time, Disney released future cartoons through United Artists until 1937, when United Artists attempted to attain future television rights to the Disney shorts. From 1937 to 1956, most of Disney's films would be distributed through RKO Radio Pictures.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and World War II
Columbia distributed Disney's shorts for two years before Walt Disney began production on his first released feature-length animated film in 1934 (a prior Alice in Wonderland film was scrapped due to competition from another company). Despite derision from most of the film industry, who dubbed the production "Disney's Folly", Disney proceeded undaunted into the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which would become the first animated feature in English and Technicolor. Considerable training, and development went into the production of Snow White, with Silly Symphonies, such as The Goddess of Spring (1934) and The Old Mill serving as experimentation grounds for new techniques, including the animation of realistic human figures, special effects animation, and the use of multiplane camera, an invention which split animation artwork layers into several planes, allowing the camera to appear to move dimensionally through an animated scene. Snow White cost Disney a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to complete, and was an unprecedented success when released in February 1938, becoming the highest-grossing film of that time. Today, it is generally considered to be Walt Disney's most significant achievement, his first-ever animated feature. Snow White was the first major animated feature made in the United States, the most successful motion picture released in 1938, and, adjusted for inflation, is the tenth highest-grossing film of all time. This historical moment in motion picture history changed the medium of animation.
Feature filmsShort films1."The World’s 25 Most Successful Media Franchises, and How They Stay Relevant". Visual Capitalist (November 22, 2019).
2."Star Movies VIP Access: The Princess and the Frog - John Lasseter". YouTube (January 25, 2010).
3.John Lasseter: 'Hollywood had become too cynical'. The Telegraph (January 29,2015). Archived from the original on February 15, 2015.
4.The Princess and the Frog Blu-ray and DVD. Audio commentary. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. 2011
5."THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG Review". Collider (December 11, 2009).
6."Review: Disney's 'Big Hero 6' Deliver's Kid-Friendly Comic Book Thrills". Forbes (October 30, 2014).
Animation studio. An animation studio is a company producing animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales or rentals of the media produced.
Animation is a filmmaking technique by which still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets ( cels) to be photographed and exhibited on film.
History of animation. This article is about the history of traditional animation. For the history of stop motion animation, see Stop motion. For the history of computer animation, see History of computer animation.
