The World History of Animation

by Stephen Cavalier, Sylvain Chomet (Foreword)

Lavishly illustrated and encyclopedic in scope, The World History of Animation tells the genre’s 100-year-old story around the globe, featuring key players in Europe, North America, and Asia. From its earliest days, animation has developed multiple iterations and created myriad dynamic styles, innovative techniques, iconic characters, and memorable stories. Stephen Cavalier’s comprehensive account is organized chronologically and covers pioneers, feature films, television programs, digital films, games, independent films, and the web. An exhaustive time line of films and innovations acts as the narrative backbone, and must-see films are listed along with synopses and in-depth biographies of individuals and studios. The book explains the evolution of animation techniques, from rotoscoping to refinements of cel techniques, direct film, claymation, and more. A true global survey, The World History of Animation is an exciting and inspirational journey through the large and still-expanding animation universe—a place as limitless as the human imagination.

• A comprehensive international history of animation, featuring all genres, styles, media, and techniques

• Features film, television, and web-based animation

• Illustrated in full color throughout

• Includes comprehensive biographies of leading practitioners
 

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Film, Art, Anime

416 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Untimely Gamer · Rating 1 out of 5]

This history is poorly written and chock full of typos and factual errors. For instance, Cavalier claims that Donkey Kong (1981) "is credited as the first game to use animation to create real characters, albeit in a limited form." Considering that Pac-Man was released just the year before, not to mention the Atari games that came even earlier, this assessment is in no way based in fact. Of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cavalier writes, "The series ended on an anticlimactic note, and several extra episodes were added to the reedited version of the series... (Death and Rebirth, 1997), which attempted to clarify the ending. A feature film...The End of Evangelion... was also made in 1997." In fact, Death and Rebirth was a compilation film and added only 27 minutes of new footage (not extra episodes), footage which was later incorporated into The End of Evangelion. It is weird to emphasize Death and Rebirth and treat The End of Evangelion as a footnote (while skipping over Death(True)2 if you are aiming for completeness). In another entry he writes, "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was a spin-off of the cult Final Fantasy series of role-play [sic] video games, which became well known for their photo-real motion-captured introductory sequences." There are too many errors, typos, and poor word choices in this one sentence to describe adequately. If you are wondering why I am focusing on video games in my examples, it is the subject I am most familiar with. I am sure, if I conducted enough research, I would find even more howlers. It is genuinely shocking how University of California Press could have released such a poorly researched and edited book.

Even without the errors, the book reeks of intellectual sloppiness. The format makes this book the coffee table equivalent of a Buzzfeed listicle; you could get about the same amount of information from an article titled "The 100 Best Animation of All Time." The book focuses disproportionately on the "great men" of animation, like Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki. Whenever the book focuses on Walt Disney, the writing quickly devolves into hagiography. In his discussion of Song of the South, he emphasizes that Disney was sensitive to "the potential [just potential?] for racial stereotyping" by assigning a Southerner and a Jewish writer to work on the script [how does this help?]. Can't have Saint Disney do a racism! Labor strikes in the animation industry are treated as hindrances stopping the flow of the magical animation (not as positive changes towards the sustainability of the animation industry and the well-being of those who work in it), and even worse, they hurt Walt Disney's feelings! Cavalier describes many mainstream works, like The Family Guy and Final Fantasy series, as having a "cult" following alongside genuinely "cult" pieces of art. His choice of video games to highlight in his history are bizarre, ignoring technological milestones like Star Fox and Jet Grind Radio in favor of strange choices like Pixeljunk Eden (?).

Stay away from this book; it is not worth your time.

[Amanda Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best history reference for any World animation fan. It's beautifully organized so the massive amount of content isn't overwhelming.
I especially appreciated the global timelines in conjunction with the regional timelines. Fascinating to see how politics and economics influenced World animation with permanent effects today.
I think this book is best used as a permanent reference in a collection, each page could really be a book of it's own.
I spent about a year going through this book sequentially and watching each film mentioned, if you too have obsessive neuroses, you might enjoy it.

[Jdetrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book very disappointing...the biggest problem being that it is exceedingly dry. This is written like an encyclopedia, with no individual flair. It also is organized oddly and chooses interesting projects on which to focus....some of them are completely understandable, and some of them seem to be chosen simply because they were a favorite of the author. It also tries to cover too much, occasionally mentioning video games, but not devoting any real time to them or the innovations in them. Perhaps it would have been best to try and focus a little more rather than trying to cover all forms of animation all around the world.

[Dan White · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is a visually sumptuous and entertaining guide through the development and wild possibilities of world animation. You could read it straight on through or just finger-dip your way through it at random.

[David Wall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learned a ton— watched a LOT of these films as I read it, which made the process of reading take a long time. However, the writing itself is often very simplistic and doesn’t dig very deeply. I also noticed many inconsistencies, typos and incorrect pieces of information throughout.

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this entire encyclopedia-like book cover to cover. It is so useful and one of my most prized possessions

[Shakeel Shafiq · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked every bit of this book. It had all I wanted to know about the earliest history of animation and how CGI software's evolved and how out of box tips helped creating best content!

[Magik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gives a broad overview of the history of animation. It's pretty good though it put me to sleep more than once.

[Kristine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some typos and errors. I was hoping for something better.

[Chaton]

真差劲

[Alex Mormino · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read! I recommend this to anyone interested in the art of animation!

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A broad and fascinating history of animation.