Pencil To Pixel

A documentary called "From Pencils to Pixels" which described the birth of animation through to today's cgi creations. Mainly focussing on Disney and Pixar, one of the earliest well known animators was Walter McKay's creator of Gertie the Dinosaur a moving animation. As McKay animation was playing he brought it to life by making it seem like he was talking to his creation Gertie by calling her over to him, getting it to do tricks and offering her an apple that was thrown onto the screen.
After Gertie the Dinosaur came the first animated superstar Felix the Cat who inspired a generations worth of animated characters. Felix was also the first animated character to be anthropomorphized, by which an animal was given human characteristics. After Felix came the animation that most people reconize as the first, Steam Boat Willy by Walt Disney the first ever animation with sound by that to be recorded with sound other then live a group of musician, with a series of short animations under his belt Walt Disney then was inspired to create the first full length animated film well known as snow white made 1936. The project took four years to complete, with 600+ animators working on the film. After Disney followed the Success of Snow White and continued to make cel animated films for years such as pinocchio, bambi, cinderella and peter pan and many more.
In 1995 a new form of animation was discovered. Pixar animation studios was bought from Lucas Arts by Steve Jobs, John Lasseter took Computer Animation and applied the prinicples of animation to his work, the result was the short animation called Luxo Lamp. This short was very successful and it allowed Pixar to work on their first full feature length film known as Toy Story, Pixar made the largest change to animation in 60 years as Disney had done in the past. Film makers have criticized that Cel animation is a deading art, but with Disney returning to the Cel animation now and studios such as Studio Gihbli making animations such as Spirited Away and ponyo it looks that for many years to come cel is far from dead.