A History of Animation

1920 – 1929 · 8 events

The 1920s

The silent cartoon reached its peak just as the technology that would end it was being installed in theaters.

What changed in this period

American studios spent the decade refining a formula: a recurring character, a weekly release, elastic bodies capable of any gag the writers could invent. The results were confident, fast and often surreal, built on a visual logic that owed more to vaudeville than to naturalism.

Europe pulled in the opposite direction. Artists working outside the studio system treated animation as a fine art — cut-paper silhouettes assembled into a feature-length fairy tale, geometric forms choreographed to music, films with no characters and no story at all. These were shown in galleries and specialist cinemas rather than neighborhood theaters, and they established the parallel tradition of animation as personal expression.

The pivot came in late 1928. A short film synchronized to a recorded score demonstrated that drawn action and sound could be locked together with a precision live-action production could not match. Music, effects and movement became a single design problem.

Within two years, every studio that intended to survive had converted. Silent animation, at the moment of its greatest technical assurance, was finished.

The record

Every documented event, 1920 – 1929

Listed in order, with context, technique, sources and related events shown in full.

  • 1921 April 27, 1921

    Walter Ruttmann screens Lichtspiel Opus I

    Hand-tinted abstract shapes expand, collide and dissolve in time with a live string accompaniment, in a film with no characters, no objects and no narrative.

    Germany Abstract and direct film Short film
    Artist or studio
    Walter Ruttmann
    Country or region
    Germany

    Historical context

    Ruttmann was one of several German artists — alongside Viking Eggeling and Hans Richter — applying the concerns of abstract painting to time-based media in the years after the First World War.

    Why it mattered

    It established absolute film as a serious artistic practice and proposed that animation's proper subject might be movement, rhythm and color rather than story.

    What followed

    The visual music tradition runs from here through Oskar Fischinger and Norman McLaren to concert visuals, title design and the abstract sequences of later studio features.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1923 October 16, 1923

    Walt and Roy Disney open a studio in Los Angeles

    After a bankruptcy in Kansas City, the Disney brothers began producing the Alice Comedies in California — shorts placing a live-action child inside an animated world.

    United States Hybrid live action Studio and institution
    Artist or studio
    Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The American industry was concentrated in New York; relocating to Los Angeles placed the new studio beside the live-action business it would eventually rival.

    Why it mattered

    It marks the founding of the studio that would drive most of the technical and commercial advances of the following two decades, and the start of animation's westward shift.

    What followed

    Los Angeles became the center of American animation production, and the Alice hybrid format kept the studio solvent long enough to attempt fully animated series.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1924

    The Fleischers synchronize cartoons with recorded sound

    The Song Car-Tunes series invited theater audiences to sing along with a bouncing ball tracking the lyrics, with several entries released using an optical sound-on-film process.

    United States Cel animation Short film
    Artist or studio
    Max and Dave Fleischer, using the DeForest Phonofilm system
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Lee de Forest's Phonofilm was one of several competing sound systems in the mid-1920s, adopted by few exhibitors and largely forgotten after the industry standardized on other formats.

    Why it mattered

    It is the earliest sustained attempt to release synchronized-sound cartoons, four years before the form became commercially viable, and it invented audience participation as a cartoon device.

    What followed

    The bouncing ball became a permanent convention, and the series demonstrated that music, not dialogue, was the natural first use of sound in animation.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1925 February 2, 1925

    The Lost World brings model animation to feature length

    Jointed dinosaur models with built-up muscular bodies were animated a frame at a time and composited with live-action footage across a full-length adventure film.

    United States Stop motion Feature film
    Artist or studio
    Willis O'Brien, First National Pictures
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    O'Brien had been refining model animation in shorts since the mid-1910s, developing armatures, breathing bladders and glass-painting composites.

    Why it mattered

    It proved that stop-motion creatures could sustain a feature-length spectacle and drew large audiences, making the technique commercially serious.

    What followed

    The methods and much of the crew carried directly into the 1933 production that made animated creature performance a cultural event.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1926 September 23, 1926 Full record

    The Adventures of Prince Achmed premieres in Berlin

    Hand-cut lead and cardboard silhouettes, animated on a backlit glass table over tinted backgrounds, tell a feature-length tale drawn from the Thousand and One Nights.

    Germany Cutout and silhouette Feature film
    Artist or studio
    Lotte Reiniger, with Carl Koch and Walter Ruttmann
    Country or region
    Germany

    Historical context

    Reiniger worked for three years with a tiny team, using a multi-level table that separated foreground figures from atmospheric backgrounds — an early anticipation of multiplane depth.

    Why it mattered

    It is the oldest surviving animated feature, and the first to be conceived as an art film rather than a commercial series extension.

    What followed

    Reiniger's silhouette technique influenced European animation for decades and remains a reference point for contemporary cut-paper and shadow work.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1927

    Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and the lesson of ownership

    A successful series character created by the Disney studio was retained by its distributor in 1928, along with most of the studio's animators, when contract terms were renegotiated.

    United States Cel animation Short film
    Artist or studio
    Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, distributed by Universal Pictures
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Distribution contracts of the period routinely assigned character ownership to the distributor rather than the production studio.

    Why it mattered

    The loss forced the immediate creation of a replacement character and permanently shaped how American animation studios treated intellectual property.

    What followed

    Character ownership, licensing control and vertical integration became central to the business of animation, and the replacement character created in 1928 became the industry's defining brand.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1928 November 18, 1928 Full record

    Steamboat Willie premieres with synchronized sound

    A seven-minute short in which action, music and effects are locked together frame by frame opened at the Colony Theatre in New York and made synchronized sound cartoons a commercial certainty.

    United States Cel animation Short film
    Artist or studio
    Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney Studios
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    It was not the first sound cartoon, but it was the first to treat synchronization as the point of the film rather than an accompaniment, using a metronome-based bar sheet to plan every accent.

    Why it mattered

    Sound gave animation something live-action could not match: absolute precision between image and score. Comic timing, musical structure and character rhythm fused into a single design problem.

    What followed

    Within two years every surviving American studio had converted to sound, musical scoring became the backbone of the cartoon short, and the bar sheet became a standard planning document.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1929 August 22, 1929

    The Skeleton Dance opens the Silly Symphonies

    Skeletons dance in a graveyard to an original score in a film with no continuing character and no plot, built entirely around the relationship between music and movement.

    United States Cel animation Short film
    Artist or studio
    Walt Disney Studios, animation by Ub Iwerks, music by Carl Stalling
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The series was conceived as a laboratory: no franchise obligations, so each entry could test color, staging, effects or character animation.

    Why it mattered

    It separated musical animation from the star-character series and created a space where studios could develop technique without commercial risk to an established property.

    What followed

    The Silly Symphonies produced the first three-strip color cartoon, the first multiplane short and much of the acting research that made feature animation possible.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

Open this period in the interactive timeline