Arc 02 History of animation

Drawn
into life

A line moves. A character breathes. An imagined world begins to feel real.

Two starting points in a much larger history: Walt Disney and Hayao Miyazaki. Follow their lives into the films, and the films into new ways of seeing.

The Repast of the Lion · Henri Rousseau, c. 1907

2 chapters · 2 lives

1920s–1960s

Drawings with a life of their own

What makes us believe that a drawing feels?

Timing, gesture, sound and an enormous amount of craft. Walt Disney’s studio brought these together in characters whose desires an audience could recognise. Follow the films from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty, and watch the language change.

Begin with Fantasia for an experiment in music and movement, or Pinocchio for the expressive possibilities of character animation.

Explore the films
NextA world alive beyond us

1960s–2020s

A world alive beyond us

What if the landscape has a life of its own?

In Miyazaki’s films, a forest, a building or a passing breeze can feel as present as a protagonist. The adventure asks its travellers to pay attention. Wonder grows from ordinary work as well as impossible creatures.

Begin with My Neighbor Totoro for a small, attentive adventure, or Spirited Away for a world that reveals itself through its rules.

Explore the films

The arc is beginning

A world made by many hands

These are two doorways, not the whole history. Animators, directors, background artists, composers and earlier pioneers will give this arc its next branches.

Find another arcFollow a different kind of imagination.

Keep following

Other arcs