A History of Animation

1990 – 1999 · 13 events

The 1990s

In 1995 an entire feature film was made without a camera or a cel. Within a decade it had reorganized the industry.

What changed in this period

The decade began with hand-drawn animation at a commercial peak. Musical features drew enormous audiences, one earned a Best Picture nomination, and studios expanded aggressively on the assumption that the boom would continue.

Digital production spread underneath that success. Ink and paint moved to computers, effects animation was rendered rather than painted, and camera moves became possible that no physical rig could have executed. Audiences experienced these as traditional films. They were already hybrids.

The rupture came in 1995. A feature animated entirely in three dimensions, with a story built deliberately around what the technology could render convincingly, was both a critical and commercial success. Competitors moved immediately, and within ten years most major studios had closed or converted their hand-drawn units.

The same decade saw Japanese animation reach a global audience through home video, festival releases and cable broadcast, with philosophically ambitious science fiction and a historical epic that briefly became the highest-grossing film in its home market.

The record

Every documented event, 1990 – 1999

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

  • 1990 November 16, 1990

    The first feature produced with digital ink and paint

    Scanned pencil drawings were colored, composited and output to film entirely within software, retiring the physical cel from feature production for the first time.

    United States Digital ink and paint Technique and tools
    Artist or studio
    Walt Disney Feature Animation with Pixar, using the Computer Animation Production System
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The system had been developed jointly over several years and was introduced gradually before being used for an entire feature.

    Why it mattered

    It removed the physical limits of stacked cels, allowed unlimited layers, digital camera moves and color effects, and eliminated the photographic degradation of multi-layer shooting.

    What followed

    Within a decade the physical cel was obsolete worldwide. The system's developers received an Academy scientific and technical award, and digital compositing became universal in drawn animation.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1991 November 22, 1991

    Beauty and the Beast is nominated for Best Picture

    The first animated film nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture combined hand-drawn character animation with a computer-generated ballroom rendered as a moving three-dimensional set.

    United States Digital ink and paint Award and recognition
    Artist or studio
    Walt Disney Feature Animation
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The nomination came at a time when no separate category for animated features existed, so the film competed directly with live-action releases.

    Why it mattered

    It forced formal recognition of animation as a complete cinematic form and demonstrated a working hybrid of drawn characters and computer-generated environments.

    What followed

    Hybrid 2D and 3D production became standard in drawn features, and the nomination is frequently cited as the argument that led to a dedicated category ten years later.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1992 September 5, 1992

    Batman: The Animated Series raises television design standards

    Character and background art were painted on black paper so that darkness was the base layer rather than an added shadow, producing an unusually cinematic look on a television schedule.

    United States Cel animation Television series
    Artist or studio
    Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski, Warner Bros. Animation
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The production drew explicitly on the design language of 1940s theatrical action shorts and on film noir photography.

    Why it mattered

    It proved that a daily-audience television series could sustain serious tone, sophisticated design and adult-level writing within standard broadcast budgets.

    What followed

    It set the visual and narrative standard for American action animation for two decades and demonstrated that television animation could be taken seriously as authored work.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1992 October 1, 1992

    A cable channel devoted entirely to animation launches

    A twenty-four-hour channel built initially on library cartoons soon began commissioning original series, many of them developed from individual shorts by their creators.

    United States Multiple techniques Distribution and streaming
    Artist or studio
    Cartoon Network
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Cable expansion created demand for continuous programming and made narrow, animation-only channels commercially viable for the first time.

    Why it mattered

    It broke the network gatekeeping that had confined American animation to weekend mornings and gave creators unusual authorial control over series development.

    What followed

    The creator-led development model produced a distinctive wave of American series in the late 1990s and 2000s and became the template for animation commissioning on streaming platforms.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1993 June 11, 1993

    Jurassic Park replaces stop motion with digital creatures

    Full-body digital dinosaurs in daylight, animated by artists using systems adapted from stop-motion armatures, convinced audiences and the industry that computer creatures were viable.

    United States 3D computer animation Feature film
    Artist or studio
    Industrial Light and Magic with Stan Winston Studio, Universal Pictures
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The film was planned around stop motion and animatronics; digital tests produced late in development changed the approach.

    Why it mattered

    It ended the era in which photorealistic creature work meant model animation, and it demonstrated that digital characters could withstand full daylight photography.

    What followed

    Visual effects converted to digital production almost immediately, and the animation skills required were drawn directly from the stop-motion and hand-drawn traditions being displaced.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1993 October 13, 1993

    The Nightmare Before Christmas revives feature stop motion

    A puppet-animated musical feature used replacement heads and faces, motion-control camera moves and a large purpose-built stage operation over three years of shooting.

    United States Stop motion Feature film
    Artist or studio
    Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton for Touchstone Pictures
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Stop motion had been confined to television specials, commercials and effects work for two decades; the film restored it to theatrical feature scale.

    Why it mattered

    It demonstrated a commercial audience for handcrafted dimensional animation at a moment when the industry was converting to digital production.

    What followed

    Dedicated stop-motion feature studios were established or expanded in its wake, and the technique has produced Academy-recognized features in every decade since.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1993 December 26, 1993

    The Wrong Trousers establishes British clay animation internationally

    A half-hour clay-animated comedy thriller with meticulous set construction, model-railway chases and performance built on the smallest facial adjustments won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.

    United Kingdom Stop motion Short film
    Artist or studio
    Nick Park, Aardman Animations
    Country or region
    United Kingdom

    Historical context

    Aardman had grown from a small Bristol studio making shorts and commercials into a company capable of sustained narrative production.

    Why it mattered

    It showed that clay animation could carry genre storytelling and precise comic timing at a level of craft equal to any technique.

    What followed

    The studio's subsequent features and shorts made British stop motion a recognized international export and influenced a generation of model animators.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1995 November 18, 1995

    Ghost in the Shell merges drawn and digital imagery

    A philosophical science-fiction feature combined traditional cel work with digitally composited displays, distortions and camera effects to depict a networked consciousness.

    Japan Hybrid live action Feature film
    Artist or studio
    Mamoru Oshii, Production I.G
    Country or region
    Japan

    Historical context

    The production integrated computer graphics into a cel pipeline at a point when few studios anywhere were attempting the combination at feature scale.

    Why it mattered

    It advanced the technical vocabulary of hybrid animation and demonstrated that animated features could sustain dense, abstract philosophical argument.

    What followed

    Its visual approach to digital space influenced live-action science fiction internationally, and it became a central text in the global expansion of anime.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1995 November 22, 1995 Full record

    Toy Story, the first fully computer-animated feature

    Every frame of an eighty-one-minute feature was generated by computer, with a story built deliberately around plastic toys because rigid, manufactured surfaces were what the technology could render convincingly.

    United States 3D computer animation Feature film
    Artist or studio
    Pixar Animation Studios, released by Walt Disney Pictures
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    The production ran four years with a small crew, developing rigging, shading, lighting and rendering tools alongside the film itself.

    Why it mattered

    It proved computer animation could sustain a feature-length character-driven narrative and became both a critical success and one of the highest-grossing releases of its year.

    What followed

    Studios converted to three-dimensional production within a decade, most hand-drawn feature units in the United States closed, and computer animation became the default commercial form worldwide.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1996

    Vector animation software opens distribution on the web

    A vector-based animation tool with a small file format allowed animated shorts and series to be published and viewed over slow domestic internet connections.

    United States 2D computer animation Distribution and streaming
    Artist or studio
    FutureWave Software, acquired by Macromedia
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Bandwidth made video distribution impractical; vector artwork described as shapes rather than pixels could be delivered in a fraction of the data.

    Why it mattered

    It removed distribution gatekeepers entirely, allowing individual animators to reach audiences without a studio, broadcaster or distributor.

    What followed

    An independent web animation culture developed through the following decade, and several of its creators moved into television and feature work.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1997 July 12, 1997

    Princess Mononoke breaks Japanese box-office records

    An epic set in medieval Japan, dealing with industrial expansion and ecological destruction without simple antagonists, became the highest-grossing film in the country at the time of release.

    Japan Cel animation Feature film
    Artist or studio
    Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli
    Country or region
    Japan

    Historical context

    The film combined an enormous volume of hand-drawn work with limited digital compositing and paint, used selectively rather than as a stylistic feature.

    Why it mattered

    It demonstrated that an animated feature could top a national box office with adult, morally unresolved material and no concessions to a children's audience.

    What followed

    It secured international distribution for the studio's catalog and prepared the ground for the wider critical recognition that followed four years later.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1998 October 2 and November 25, 1998

    Two computer-animated features open in the same season

    Competing insect-themed computer-animated features released seven weeks apart confirmed that the form was a commercial category rather than a single studio's specialty.

    United States 3D computer animation Feature film
    Artist or studio
    PDI and DreamWorks Animation, and Pixar Animation Studios
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Both productions required advances in crowd simulation, since insect societies demanded thousands of individually moving characters.

    Why it mattered

    It ended any expectation that computer animation would remain a niche, and it drove rapid investment in simulation and crowd systems.

    What followed

    Multiple studios established computer animation divisions, and crowd simulation became a standard department in feature production.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

  • 1999 May 1, 1999

    SpongeBob SquarePants and the creator-led children's series

    A series created by a marine biologist and animator, built on hand-drawn character animation and an idiosyncratic visual sense, became one of the most widely distributed animated programs ever made.

    United States Digital ink and paint Television series
    Artist or studio
    Stephen Hillenburg, Nickelodeon
    Country or region
    United States

    Historical context

    Cable channels were commissioning series directly from individual creators rather than developing them internally through executive committees.

    Why it mattered

    It confirmed that creator-driven development produced more distinctive and more durable programming than the licensing-led model it replaced.

    What followed

    The approach became standard across children's animation, and creator-led series remain the principal source of original animated television.

    Sources consulted

    Related events

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