|
Television animation developed from the success of animated movies in the first half of the 20th century. The state of animation changed dramatically in the four decades starting with the post-World War II proliferation of television. While studios gave up on the big-budget theatrical short cartoons that throve in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, new television animation studios would thrive based on the economy and volume of their output. By the end of the 1980s, most of the Golden Age animators had retired or died, and their younger successors were ready to change the industry and the way that animation was perceived. == From the big screen to the small screen == Cartoons were never intended just for children. Cartoons in the Golden Age, such as ''Red Hot Riding Hood'', contained topical and often suggestive humor, though they were seen primarily as "children's entertainment" by movie exhibitors. This point of view prevailed when the new medium of television began showing cartoons in the late 1940s. One of the very first images to be broadcast over television was that of Felix the Cat. In 1938, cartoonist Chad Grothkopf's eight-minute experimental ''Willie the Worm'', cited as the first animated film created for TV, was shown on NBC.〔Connecticut Historical Society〕 As TV became a phenomenon and began to draw audiences away from movie theaters, many children's TV shows included airings of theatrical cartoons in their schedules, and this introduced a new generation of children to the cartoons of the 1920s and 1930s. Cartoon producer Paul Terry sold the rights to the Terrytoons cartoon library to television and retired from the business in the early 1950s. This guaranteed a long life for the characters of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle, whose cartoons were syndicated and rerun in children's television programming blocks for the next 30 to 40 years. There were a number of early experiments in limited animation television cartoons. These cartoons usually were about five minutes in length and were episodic in nature, allowing stations to flexibly program them. One of the first cartoons produced expressly for television was ''Crusader Rabbit'', a creation of Alexander Anderson and Jay Ward. A small studio in Florida was responsible for another early adventure serial, ''Colonel Bleep''. Often, existing programs would be a launching ground for new cartoon characters. In 1956, the ''Howdy Doody'' show aired the first ''Gumby'' clay animated cartoon from creator Art Clokey. Sam Singer earned a certain degree of infamy for his efforts at television animation, which included an animated adaptation of ''The Adventures of Paddy the Pelican'' (which may or may not have made it to air) and the original series ''Bucky and Pepito'', both of which have been cited as among the worst of their kind. On the other hand, a long-running series of animated shorts named ''Tom Terrific'' was produced by Terrytoons for the ''Captain Kangaroo'' show, and this series was praised by film historian Leonard Maltin as "one of the finest cartoons ever produced for television." 〔Maltin, L. (1987). ''Of mice and magic: A history of American animated cartoons'' (Rev. ed.). New York: New American Library.〕 Beginning in 1954, Walt Disney capitalized on the medium of television with his own weekly TV series, ''Disneyland.'' This ABC show popularized his new Disneyland theme park and began a decades-long series of TV broadcasts of Disney cartoons, which later expanded into the show ''Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color.'' While Disney recognized that the economics of the medium could not support his production standards and refused to go into TV animation, he still ordered the creation of one character exclusive to TV, Ludwig Von Drake. The character's segments would link compilations of the company's archived theatrical shorts as complete episodes. Walt continued to host the show for the rest of his life, and he became as recognizable to the TV audience as his studio's cartoon characters. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Animation in the United States in the television era」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|