Everyone knows animation when they see it. Animation is the process of using rapidly moving drawn or computer generated images to give the illusion of movement. Animation is what goes into making the Saturday morning cartoons you see on TV and it’s what goes into making those holiday specials everyone looks forward to seeing all year long. Animation can also be done with three-dimensional objects such as clay or action figures, as in the very popular Christmas specials made in the 1970s that featured small dolls filmed with stop motion photography. Animation used to be considered a novelty when it came to prime time movies or TV shows. The studios would never think of putting animation in a position where it would be the feature film, even after the 1930s, when Walt Disney demonstrated with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that animation could make a feature film. But over time something changed and now animation threatens to be the method of choice not only for filmmakers but also for prime time television producers.

For years the area of ​​animated feature film was the exclusive domain of the Walt Disney Company. Other companies would pop up and make the occasional animated feature, but the only studio that made its living and made a reputation almost solely from its animated feature films was the Walt Disney Company. Warner Brothers opened an animation studio to compete with the animated shorts that Disney was using to dominate the children’s market, and Warner Brothers also wanted to use their animated shorts as an incentive for theater owners to show their regular feature films. If the theater owner agreed to show the offered Warner Brothers movie, he would get the animated cartoon for free. With Warner Brothers cartoons becoming breakaway hits, and many people happily paying full admission just to see the cartoons, it became an easy way for Warner Brothers to get their movies into theaters. But by the late 1970s, things began to change, and animation headed toward respectability in mainstream media markets.

One of the people usually credited for bringing animation to the forefront is someone who didn’t deal with animation at all. Jim Henson was a puppet maker and soon became famous throughout the world for his television shows and movies, which featured his puppets which he called the Muppets. In 1979, Henson released The Muppet Movie, and while he didn’t change anyone’s mind about animation, he did bring an interesting dynamic to the big screen that not many people had seen before. In The Muppet Movie there were puppets that interacted with real people and were the main characters in the movie. Many movies before The Muppet Movie had used the idea of ​​puppets, or animated characters, interacting with real people, but The Muppet Movie was a sensational success, bringing the idea to millions of people who had never seen it before. In 1982, Henson released The Dark Crystal, which was a fantasy film that used only puppets as characters and did not feature any actors. It wasn’t animation, and it wasn’t as big of a hit as The Muppet Movie was, but The Dark Crystal proved that you didn’t need actors to make a movie. Six years later, this idea was used to open animation forever.

In 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was released, and for the first time, a film that used cartoons as its main characters won multiple Academy Awards. The film was also monumental in that although Walt Disney Studios made the film, it also featured Warner Brothers characters. At the time of its release, it was the most expensive film ever made and was also one of the most successful films of the year. Roger Rabbit blew the doors off the world of animation, and suddenly studios everywhere were clamoring to create his own animated feature. The animation had arrived in a big way.

Today, two of the longest-running prime-time shows on television are animated. Family Guy is entering its eighth season on the Fox network in prime time on Sundays and The Simpsons is also entering its record 20th season in prime time on Fox. South Park is entering its thirteenth season in Comedy Central and it shows no signs of stopping. The Simpsons and South Park spawned successful feature films during their run and the creators of South Park had a lesser successful feature film when they made a movie entirely with puppets. Today, it’s not unusual to find that two or three of the summer blockbusters are animated movies, and with the help of computers, animation is heading in exciting new directions.