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The Enchanted Drawing
A silent film by J. Stuart Blackton, who some call the father of animation. His silent film shot in Thomas Edison’s Black Moria studio in New Jersey is credited as the first animated sequence on film ever. He does a bit of prop work and a few expression changes but nonetheless is still considered animation. -
Felix the Cat
Felix was the leading character of a series of short cartoons created by Otto Messmer and became the first real ‘star’ of the animated silent film era. He was a bit of a pop culture icon as well, having dolls, toys, watches, ceramics, postcards and more made in his image. This is when animation started breaking out in Hollywood due to its advancements. -
Steamboat Willie
Although Steamboat Willie was not Mickey's first debut, it was the one that popularised him in animation. In addition, it was the first to be fully scored in animation. This film is known to be the game changer in animation history. -
Dizzy Dishes
Betty Boop was formally introduced in this cartoon. Advances such as scoring and more precise movements were seen in this cartoon. Betty Boop character was not yet fully developed so she looked similar to a dog. -
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White was the first full-length feature animation length film. Walt Disney spent hours and went out of Disney's budget to create the film. It is marked as the essential turning point in animation. -
The Flintstones
The Flintstones was the first ever animated series to be on prime time TV. It was preceded by CBS and soon became very popular. This led to high demand for animated series -
Roger Rabbit
The first feature film to have live-action and cartoon characters share the same screen. Roger Rabbit is also a major milestone in animated history because of the sheer number of characters and assets from different studios that made an appearance. This lead to different variations of animation. -
Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park mixed animatronics, stop-motion, and CGI to create the most photo-realistic animated creatures ever before seen on screen. It took over a year to create the dinosaurs. It used Industrial Light and Magic. -
Toy Story
After Jurrasic Park, Pixar soon came out with the first ever full length CGI film. It had full model articulation and motion control coding to bring the toys to life. Toy Story was the first animated film for an Academy award. -
Lord of Rings
Lord of Rings used even more CGI utilizing it with real actors. A fully computer generated character could appear alongside actors and it looked amazing. Animation shifted to manly only using CGI fr movies. -
Avatar
Avatar utilized advance CGI to create realistic looking aliens. The movie took years to make due to the complex CGI used. They also used full body actors for CGI. -
Paranorm
ParaNorman by studio LAIKA represents some of the most advanced stop-motion and modeling techniques in animation to date. It was the first to make use of mass 3D printing for its models – creating over 31,000 individual face parts during production.
This technique is why the puppets in ParaNorman are so expressive and versatile – over 250 unique faces were used for one character to create a single shot lasting only 27 seconds.