British animation

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émigrés to the UK; renowned animators such as Lotte Reiniger (Germany), John Halas (Hungary), George Dunning and Richard Williams (Canada), Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton (United States) have all worked in the UK at various stages of their careers. Notable full-length animated features to be produced in the UK include Animal Farm (1954), Yellow Submarine (1968), Watership Down (1978), and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
(2005).

Conceptualising British animation history

The history of British animation has gone through several stages of development, significantly influenced by both internal and international political, economic, and cultural factors. Important among these is the relative impact of the international animation industry, which in several instances has been seen as both a challenge to produce more local content, and as a creative and/or commercial inspiration to follow or work against.

To clarify the emergence and interplay of the different agendas, aesthetics, and industrial relationships that have shaped British animation history, media scholar Van Norris posits a rough chronological

taxonomy of animation's development in the UK along three distinct "waves", the first comprising the establishment of the British animation industry, the second detailing the impact of the incursion of dissident politics, fringe artistic communities, and emergent distribution systems in the industry, and the third representing the neoliberal
re-consolidation of all of these tendencies into more commercially driven and comedic popular media.

Early experiments in form and commerce

Belgian scientist Joseph Plateau introduced stroboscopic animation in 1833 and in the same year published his designs with Ackermann in London as the Phantasmascope and later as the Fantascope, after the device had become known as the phénakistiscope through a publisher in Paris. Many British stroboscopic disc releases followed.

In 1872, English-born Eadweard Muybridge, a photographer living in San Francisco, started his series of sequential photographs of animals in motion.[1] Books of his work are still widely used for reference by artists and animators.

"Matches Appeal", produced by

Dolly’s Toys, produced in 1901, and featuring a mixture of live-action and stop-motion puppetry.[2] In 1925, Cardiff-based animator Sid Griffiths working with Brian White, created the silent short Jerry the Tyke for Pathe, which was shown on their fortnightly magazine, Pathe Pictorial, on cinema screens around the world.[3] Griffiths and Brian White set up together in Charing Cross Road, London in 1929, producing animated advertisements for the Superads agency. In 1927 the 40 minutes long and now lost cutout animated movie The Story of the Flag, by Anson Dyer, was released. Dyer's producer Archibald Nettlefold decided to split it into six parts and release them as a series of theatrical shorts instead, as he didn't have enough faith in it as the main theatrical attraction.[4][5][6]

First wave: Establishment of an industry

In the 1930s, the creation of Public information films from the GPO (Post Office) unit and later wartime and post-war information films allowed for greater experimentation than the more market driven work across the Atlantic.[7] John Grierson established GPO Film Unit and produced many films using animation as Grierson believed it was an ideal medium to communicate information. For these films he hired experimental animators such as Norman McLaren and Len Lye.

These GPO productions and the many wartime propaganda films led to an industry of animators with a diversity of design styles, well versed in conveying messages efficiently and clearly. The influence of the combined demand from smaller commercial and governmental contracts would encourage the development of a variety of boutique production companies, as opposed to the more monolithic system developing concurrently in the United States.[8] Halas and Batchelor maintained their position as one of the leading European animation companies, producing many commercials and short films during most of the second half of the twentieth century, and in 1954 produced the influential and groundbreaking animated feature Animal Farm. It would set a darker tone for future animation production in UK.

Emergence of children's TV

The popularisation of television broadcasting in the UK during the 1950s brought with it both new avenues for animation production and a shift in the demographic orientation of animation to the realms of children's programming. In 1950, the children's TV series Watch with Mother (1950–74) was broadcast which featured several puppet-based segments (such as Andy Pandy and Flower Pot Men) that would go on to become staples of British children's popular imagery and animation.

proclivity for wood and felt
puppets and static facial features.

Aesthetics and influence

The later impact of the music and film industries that brought the UK to the cultural fore during the 1960s and early 1970s created new markets and areas of influence for British pop culture. The 1968 animated feature film

Disney-codified squash and stretch approach would become a staple of Britain's boutique-driven animation culture, and would inform the more experimental films and TV segments that emerged in the following decades.[10]

In the 1970s, this experimental tendency was fostered in large part by the British television system's commitment to and experimentation with educational programming formats.

Morph, who would appear in a handful of other shows as well.[12]

In the realm of theatrical animation, 1978 saw the release of

cel-animated
artform than its US contemporaries.

Second wave (1979–1996)

The growing diversity of artistic approaches fostered during the 1970s came to fruition in the next decade, helped in some cases by funding from Channel 4. Alison de Vere was one of the first independent women animators to make an impact such as Mr Pascal (1979), which gained the Grand Prix at the Annecy Festival, and The Black Dog (1987). Other women also began to emerge during the 1970s, making films with overtly feminist and political themes.

Channel 4 was a fundamental supporter of fringe media on British broadcast TV, pushing for increased representations of underexposed issues of

The Quay Brothers, Paul Vester, Phil Mulloy and others.[14]
In addition to providing exposure and monetary support, this fostering of fringe animators allowed many of these animators to make contact with the wider artistic and entertainment community of the UK.

Though much of the animated work screened by Channel 4 during this time proved too experimental for mainstream tastes, some of it would yield global commercial successes. The television animated special The Snowman, an adaptation of Raymond Briggs novel, again produced by TVC Animation and directed by Dianne Jackson, was a substantial popular and financial success that remains a perennial Christmas favourite. It is during this time that Aardman would break through to the mainstream as well, thanks in large part to the shorts Creature Comforts (1989) and the Wallace and Gromit films, all of which were directed by Nick Park. Stop-motion would likewise continue to have a strong presence in children's TV, with Postman Pat. Mechanised puppetry mixed with limited stop-motion animation would similarly continue to be used in a few successful shows created during this time, such as Thomas the Tank Engine.

Cooperation and competition with US-based production companies

Walt Disney Productions established a British branch during this time that would be responsible for Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988. In 1991, Steven Spielberg's Amblimation would be established as well, producing several features as well as broadcast programming, including An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), We're Back! A Dinosaur Story (1993), and Balto (1995). Though Amblimation would close in 1997, with some of its staff going on to join DreamWorks Animation.[15]

In international interaction, several British animated shows produced during this time found success through

Nickelodeon
.

The US media made its presence felt in Britain during the 1990s in other ways as well. With the explosive success of

Sky TV (launched in 1993), the mantle of supporting animation would in turn be taken up by the wider commercial media.[16]

Third wave (1997–present)

The late 1990s brought with them substantial changes to the British cultural and media environment. Politically, the rise of

Disney Channel
in 1995, and Cartoon Network in 1999, with many new and derivative channels emerging since.

This rise in broadcasting competition and establishment of new priorities had several effects in the British animation production environment. To begin with, it offered further avenues for children's media producers to seek funding and distribution. This was beneficial to the existing animation boutique system production community which allowed for a variety of approaches and aesthetics. In the following years, there would be increased opportunities for transnational cooperation between producers based in the UK and the

I am Not an Animal (2004) and Popetown
(2005).

Millennial children's animation

The BBC ceded a significant amount of the children's demographic to new channels. Instead doubled down on its flagship live-action children's programming and on preschool programming with the launch of

Disney Junior and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
.

New and transnational media

During the 1990s and 2000s, the UK saw the emergence of a local video games industry, with derivative areas of production devoted to computer

Double Negative producing visual effects and computer graphics animation for a variety of local and international filmic works. Several British animations online developed international cult followings, such as Salad Fingers and Don't Hug Me I'm Scared
.

Similar transnational relationships would develop between established and emerging filmic and televisual animation studios and larger foreign companies. Aardman would sign co-financing and distribution deals with

interstitials for Nickelodeon much like the ones they once made for Channel 4 in the 1980s.[18] Cartoon Network would also foster relationships with British producers, with their flagship series The Amazing World of Gumball
(2011–2019), which was created, written, and partially animated in the UK, with British voice actors voicing many of the main characters.

Due to the early fragmentation of the industry which created a culture of interrelating but independent production companies, the UK has been able to continuously generate aesthetically innovative and often socially incisive animated works. British animation has managed for the most part to maintain both several markers of identity and niches within the global animation marketplace.

Notable British animations

References

  1. ^ "Eadweard Muybridge (British photographer)". Britannica. Archived from the original on 11 April 2012. Retrieved 3 March 2012. English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection.
  2. ^ Burrows, Elaine. "Animation". BFI Screenonline. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 21 November 2014.
  3. ^ Andrews, Robert (22 September 2002). "Cartoon pioneer dog has his day". BBC News. Archived from the original on 2 April 2009. Retrieved 3 March 2012.
  4. ^ Historical Dictionary of Animation and Cartoons
  5. ^ The lesser-spotted British animated feature
  6. ^ The Story of the Flag
  7. ^ Norris, Van. British Television 1997-2010: Drawing Comic Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 23.
  8. ^ Norris, Van. British Television 1997-2010: Drawing Comic Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 26.
  9. ^ Sibley, Brian (1998). The Medium. In Lord, Peter; Sibley, Brian. Cracking Animation (1st ed.). Thames and Hudson. p. 38
  10. ^ Norris, Van. British Television 1997-2010: Drawing Comic Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 35.
  11. ^ Lord, Peter (1998). Introduction. In Lord, Peter; Sibley, Brian. Cracking Animation (1st ed.). Thames and Hudson. p. 12
  12. ^ Lord, Peter (1998). Making a Film. In Lord, Peter; Sibley, Brian. Cracking Animation (1st ed.). Thames and Hudson. p. 156.
  13. S2CID 153535630
    .
  14. ^ Norris, Van. British Television 1997-2010: Drawing Comic Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 31
  15. ^ "Film: The Man Who Would Be Walt". archive.nytimes.com. Retrieved 2024-01-04.
  16. ^ Doe, John. "From Minority to Mainstream: Channel 4's Queer Television". E-Media Studies, Volume 2, Issue 1. Dartmouth College Publishing. Archived from the original on 13 December 2014. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  17. ^ Norris, Van. British Television 1997-2010: Drawing Comic Tradition. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, p. 45.
  18. ^ Lord, Peter (1998). "Simple Techniques". In Lord, Peter; Sibley, Brian. Cracking Animation (1st ed.). Thames and Hudson. p. 82
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