Modern animation in the United States from the late 1980s to 2004 is frequently referred to as the renaissance age of American animation. During this period, many large American entertainment companies reformed and reinvigorated their animation departments, following the dark age, and the United States had an influence on global and worldwide animation.
The history of animation, the method for creating moving pictures from still images, has an early history and a modern history that began with the advent of celluloid film in 1888. Between 1895 and 1920, during the rise of the cinematic industry, several different animation techniques were developed or re-invented, including stop-motion with objects, puppets, clay or cutouts, and drawn or painted animation. Hand-drawn animation, which mostly consisted of a succession of still images painted on cels, was the dominant technique of the 20th century and became known as traditional animation.
William Gale Vinton was an American animator and filmmaker. Vinton was best known for his Claymation work, alongside creating iconic characters such as The California Raisins. He won an Oscar for his work alongside several Emmy Awards and Clio Awards for his studio's work.
Bill Plympton is an American animator, graphic designer, cartoonist, and filmmaker best known for his 1987 Academy Award–nominated animated short Your Face and his series of shorts featuring a dog character starting with 2004's Guard Dog.
Liquid Television was an animation showcase broadcast on MTV from 1991 to 1995. It launched several high-profile original cartoons, including Beavis and Butt-Head and Æon Flux. Other recurring segments include "The Art School Girls of Doom", The Specialists, and Brad Dharma: Psychedelic Detective. Independent animators and artists created most of the material specifically for the show, and some previously produced segments were compiled from festivals such as Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation.
Karl Sims is a computer graphics artist and researcher, who is best known for using particle systems and artificial life in computer animation.
Warner Bros. Animation Inc. is an American animation studio which is part of the Warner Bros. Television Group, a division of Warner Bros., which is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery and serves as the animation division and label of Warner Bros.
The Adventures of André & Wally B. is a 1984 American animated short film produced by the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Project, a division of Lucasfilm and the predecessor of Pixar. The short was groundbreaking by the standards of the time and helped spark the film industry's interest in computer animation.
The Mind's Eye series consists of several art films rendered using computer-generated imagery of varying levels of sophistication, with original music scored note-to-frame. The series was conceived by Steven Churchill of Odyssey Productions in 1989. The initial video was directed, conceptualized, edited and co-produced by Jan Nickman of Miramar Productions and produced by Churchill. The first three products in the series were released on VHS and LaserDisc. The second and third programs in the series were also released on DVD, while the fourth program was released and distributed by Sony Music exclusively on DVD.
John Russell Dilworth is an American animator, actor, writer, director, storyboard artist, producer and the creator of the animated television series Courage the Cowardly Dog. Dilworth's works have appeared on PBS, CBS, Showtime, HBO, Fox, ABC, NBC, Arte, CBC Television, YTV, Teletoon, BBC Two, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV, among others.
Short Circutz is a series of short computer-animated videos that were played between television shows on YTV every afternoon and evening from September 5, 1994 until August 31, 1997. Most videos were 30 to 120 seconds long and often played between other computer-animated shows, such as ReBoot and Beasties. The videos were all sampled from three film collections: The Mind's Eye, its sequel Beyond the Mind's Eye, and Imaginaria.
DNA Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio and production company based in Irving, Texas. It was founded in 1987 by John A. Davis and Keith Alcorn. The studio originally worked on miscellaneous projects for other companies, including commercials and corporate videos, before branching out to television and film animation.
Bob Sabiston is an American film art director, computer programmer, and creator of the Rotoshop software program for computer animation. Sabiston began developing software as an undergraduate and then graduate researcher in the MIT Media Lab from 1986 to 1991. While at MIT, and also after moving to Austin, Texas, in 1993, Sabiston used his 2D/3D software to create several short films, including God's Little Monkey (1994), "Beat Dedication" (1988), and "Grinning Evil Death" (1990). "Grinning Evil Death" was widely seen on the first episode of MTV's "Liquid Television" show. "God's Little Monkey" won the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica award for 1994.
Wildbrain Entertainment, Inc. was an American entertainment company and animation studio that developed and produced television programming, motion pictures, commercial content, and licensed merchandise. Established in 1994, it maintained offices in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.
Joanna Priestley is an American contemporary film director, producer, animator and teacher. Her films are in the collections of the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Priestley has had retrospectives at the British Film Institute, Museum of Modern Art and Hiroshima International Animation Festival in Japan. Bill Plympton calls her the "Queen of independent animation". Priestley lives and works in Portland, Oregon.
The International Tournée of Animation was an annual touring program of alternative animated films that started in 1965 as The First Festival of Animated Film with each selected and assembled from films from many countries around the world and which existed from the 1970s to the 1980s-90s.
Terrence Masson is a computer graphics educator, producer, and lecturer, specializing in animation, storytelling and executive leadership. He is the chair of the MFA Computer Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City. He was also founder and CEO of Building Conversation, an augmented reality company located in Boston, MA. He was both the ACM SIGGRAPH 2006 Computer Animation Festival Chair and 2010 Conference Chair. He also wrote the book CG 101: A Computer Graphics Industry Reference, and has contributed to films, television programs, and video games.
Jan Nickman is an American film and television director, producer, cinematographer and writer. As the co-founder of Miramar Images, Inc. and Sacred Earth Pictures, Nickman's career in film and television spans three decades.
Beny Tchaicovsky (1954–2009) was a painter, musician and a multimedia computer artist. Tchaicovsky's paintings have been exhibited internationally in museums such as the Luxembourg Museum in Paris with the 1989 show "Les Trois Amériques à Paris", as well as in exhibitions in Germany, Brazil and the United States. Tchaicovsky's numerous awards include The Visionary, awarded first place for the best cyberposter on International Multimedia Day at the 49th Cannes Film Festival in 1996.
