Animation History 4: The Golden Age

In 1928 Steamboat Willie was created. This was the beginning of the golden age of animation. Many people had produced films that were entertaining and funny but Walt Disney was the man who put it all together. Steamboat Willie was the first animation to have a fully post produced and synchronised soundtrack. (It was also the origin of mickey mouse). Disney Studios produced a number of successful animations which went on to inspire many other animators.

In 1929 Aleksandr Ptushko created an almost exclusively stop motion feature length movie. and this trend continued around the world with new animations coming from France, Japan and Germany.

During the second world war many animations were used as propaganda, particularly from disney, these varied from making hitler less scary to the importance of growing your own vegetables.

between 1928 to 1957 many animations were created in a multitude of styles and over a multitude of different styles, some even addressed extremely modern issues such as racism even before the African-American Civil rights movement.

The golden age ended with the introduction on the TV and cinema houses wanting to compete and the stopping of block booking animated shorts when a feature film came to an end. Though this was not the end of the history of animation by any means.