Limited Animation - History

History

The use of budget-cutting and time-saving animation measures in animation dates at least to the 1920s; recycled animations, mirror-image and symmetrical drawings, mumbling characters and such were common even when traditional animation dominated. The 1942 Merrie Melodies short "The Dover Boys" was a particular early prototype of the use of what would become known as limited animation, though pressure from Warner Bros. curtailed much further use of the technique.

Limited animation was originally founded as an artistic device, though it was soon used widely as a cost-cutting measure rather than an aesthetic method. The UPA studio made the first serious effort to abandon the keyframe heavy approach perfected by Disney. Their first effort at limited animation, Gerald McBoing-Boing, won an Oscar, and it provided the impetus for this animation method to be accepted at the major Hollywood cartoon studios, including Warner Brothers and MGM. However, the real attraction of limited animation was the reduction in costs: because limited animation does not require as many drawings as fully keyframed animations, it is much less expensive to produce. The 1950s saw all of the major cartoon studios change their style to limited animation, to the point where painstaking detail in animation occurred only rarely.

Limited animation techniques in America were used during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to produce a great number of inexpensive Saturday morning cartoons. Such TV series as Clutch Cargo are known for being produced on extremely low budgets, with camera tricks used in place of actual animation. Despite the low quality of the animation, the TV cartoon studios Hanna-Barbera, DePatie-Freleng Enterprises, Jay Ward and Filmation thrived during this period. The desire of the time to emulate full animation with limited animation led to many highly apparent visual issues.