You Gon Learn Today: A Brief History of Animation

From Western cartoons to anime to computer animated to claymation. In one form or another, animation has been around for damn near two centuries at this point. It’s given rise to the mouse empire, breathed life into our wildest imaginations, and has touched our hearts in ways live action never could. When we look at the different eras of animation, we can see just how much it has changed and evolved over the years. While Disney tends to be the backbone when separating its history into eras, many different companies and properties contribute to the vast history of the media. You have your high highs in the Golden Age and Renaissance Age, and your low lows like the Dark Age. The medium is always evolving and learning to reinvent itself. And recently, I feel this has kicked into overdrive. So, sit back dear reader as I, Professor G (not a real professor), take you through a brief history of animation. The Beginnings of Animation For those unfamiliar, the ages of animation tend to follow the same guidelines as the history of the Earth. Starting from the beginning and changing with major upheavals within the industry. The beginning of the timeline consists of longer ages whereas the more recent ones are shorter with the quicker advancement of technology. There isn’t a universal agreement on all the ages but there’s a general consensus that I’ll use for our history class.

Image vis Wikipedia

The Early Animation Age which covers pretty much everything before 1907. This gave us th…