Other Studios (1892-)

Searching through this list of thousands of animation studios may be a bit tedious- there are thousands of cartoon producers listed here. But there are many gems in the DataBase just waiting to be found! Take for instance, Pantomimes Lumineuses. Produced by Charles-Émile Reynaud, this series of three animated image loops represents the first theatrical projection of animation. The next milestone in animation was Albert E. Smith's The Humpty Dumpty Circus. The Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats credits this as "the first animated film using the stop-motion technique to give the illusion of movement to inanimate objects." J. Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases Of Funny Faces is important as the first animated cartoon (i.e. film containing drawn animation), it contains all the elements of a fully animated short, but it has no real narrative content. Émil Cohl produced Fantasmagorie in 1908. This film was fully animated with no live action, generally considered to be the first fully-animated film.

The popular misconception is that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the first animated films. Actually, at least eight feature-length animated films preceded the Disney opus. (Disney's film was, however, was the first to become successful feature in the English-speaking world and the first to use cel animation.) Disney was beat to the title by twenty years by the Argentinian production El Apóstol. Directed by Quirino Cristiani, unfortunately all known copies disappeared in a 1926 fire in producer Federico Valle's vaults. The oldest surviving feature film is the German feature Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed). Produced by the German expressionist studio UFA, the film was directed by Charlotte 'Lotte' Reiniger and Carl Koch.

The next big development was animation for television. Hanna-Barbera was the obvious leader in the field, but there are many other important producers of TV animation. One of the first on the scene was Jay Ward Productions. Coming from his background at Warner Bros., Friz Freleng's DePatie-Freleng Enterprises was an early big producer of independent TV animation. DiC Entertainment also became quite prominent in the 1970's through the turn of the century. One of the most prominent studios grew out of Hanna-Barbera and its own cable operations. Cartoon Network Studios, and their subsidy studio Williams Street... and partner Frederator Studios have brought television series animation into the new century.

North of the border, Nelvana Limited and CINAR Animation (Cookie Jar Entertainment) are prominent TV producers. And while we are in Canada, let's not forget National Film Board of Canada, the engorgement sponsored source of many experimental animated shorts.

Next to the United States, no country makes more animated films than Japan. Major studios in Japan include Nippon Animation, Tôei Dôga, Tatsunoko Productions and Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli.

Many other countries have great animation studios, too. In Britain, we saw great marionette animation from Gerry Anderson Productions and the stop-motion studio Aardman Animations. Eastern Europe has Czechoslovakian studios Krátký Film Praha and Gene Deitch's Rembrandt Films, and Yugoslavian Zagreb Film. France has given us many important early films from Eclair Films, Pathé, and Gaumont Studios, whose output came from native France, the United Kingdom and the US.

The next wave in animation is the computer generated animation. We all know the monsters in this field, the Pixars and DreamWorks. There are many minor studios who also do CG animation, like Blue Sky Studios and Vanguard Animation.

And what of the future? Who knows... but as they create, we will add the to the DataBase.