Understanding: The Golden Age of Animation

By 1928 animation had developed its own 'language' both technically and artistically and was on the rise commercially. The Golden Age of animation saw the birth of profitable animation, not only was animation seen as art, but it was also seen as a form of money making and had become extremely popular. With people such as the Fleischer Brothers, Reynaud and Starewicz, it was seen that animation could be used for entertainment purposes and that animation was more often than not funny to watch. This allowed Walt Disney charge ahead with a whole new vision for animation and the Golden Age began.

Steamboat Willie was Disney's first ever animation that was also the first animation to a fully post-produced soundtrack synched with the footage. Walt Disney had worked alongside Ub Iwerks to produce this short animation and it was extremely successful not just in terms of popularity, but it was also a huge step in animation and was seen a significant influence to future animation and it is seen as this today.

Steamboat Willie, 1928

From here animated cartoons began to flood in. Only one year later in 1929 Disney made another animation with synchronised sound. The Skeleton Dance from Disney's "Silly Symphonies" was developed to fit around composer Carl Stalling's work rather than the other way around. It is argued that this could have possibly been the first "music video" ever produced, as this animation was created to fit the music rather than the music being made for the animation.

The Skeleton Dance

Right up until the end of the Golden Age in 1957 animations were being created across the world in many different countries such as, Japan, Russia, Germany, New Zealand, Uk, China and Canada. Throughout this period there were many significantly influential animations made using many different techniques such as stop motion animation and Pixilation.

 However, the most advanced form of traditional animation, that could be said to have had a huge impact on how animation was created aesthetically at the time, would be Disney's Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs created in 1937. This was the largest budget animation that Disney had made so far and it had 1000 different people working on it. Not only was it huge leap in terms of length and budget of the animation, but it also combined other animation techniques together such as rotoscoping with traditional animation. During the making of this animation, Disney also introduced complex layered parallax animation.

Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, 1937

Overall, the Golden Age of animation was an extremely important part of animation history and it has help to mould and sculpt the animation processes and techniques that we use today.