Joseph Gilland.

After almost 30 years working all over the world in the animation industry, a couple of years ago I found myself drawn to the idea of passing on everything I had experienced and learned in the world of animation to the next generation of young people crazy enough to want to make a career and a life out of making cartoons. A wonderful opportunity presented itself, and now here I am in my third year of heading an animation program at the Vancouver Film School. Watching students graduate into an industry, which is bubbling over with new opportunities that weren’t there 10 or 20 years ago.

The business is booming! Feature films and television series are being produced right here at home, fewer and fewer of them being sent overseas, to be churned out by cheap laborers there. Technology has given us a gift — the gift of the repatriation of the animation industry. It has come back home, but is it here to stay? I, for one certainly hope so. So let’s take a good look at how we got here and where we’re going now. Oh, and keep in mind I always approach this from my twisted Canadian perspective, so “American,” becomes “North American,” OK? The American animation industry has always been populated heavily with Canadian frost-backs, so bear with me on that point. I’m skewed. (Twelve years of my career was spent in L.A. and Florida!)

Back in the early to mid-’60s, those of us who are old enough to remember, would wait every week for Saturday morning to come, so we could watch our favorite cartoons (in black and white) on our local television network. In my case, there were only two channels available, and I would switch back and forth to catch my favorite cartoons. The world seemed like a relatively simple, safe, predictable place at the time. What most of us didn’t know though, was that we were witnessing the last gasp of a classical art form, some of the last cartoons to be 100% “Made in America” for a long, long, time to come.

While much of the technology of broadcasting, radio and video production was growing and changing quickly behind the scenes at the time, the film and animation businesses were pretty much using the same equipment and technology that they had since the early 1900s. Cartoons were still painstakingly drawn on paper, traced onto acetate cels and shot on massive camera stands onto 35mm film. Until the animation union shake-ups of the mid-’60s, animated films were made at home, a North American product, made by North American artists on North American soil. Even though studios like Hanna-Barbara had introduced a dumbed-down version of the animated cartoon by heavily and sometimes tastelessly exploiting the concept of “limited” animation, (creatively handled by the likes of Chuck Jones earlier on) there was still quite a bit of originality, fun and quality in much of the animation programming being produced.

There was a remarkably wide variety of wholesome cartoon programming being offered up by the major animation studios at that time. Shows like The Pink Panther, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, The Jetsons, Top Cat, Astro Boy, Atom Ant, Secret Squirrel, Aquaman, The Bugs Bunny Show, The Road Runner Show, Space Ghost Alvin and the Chipmunks, Dino Boy, The New Adventures of Superman, The Fantastic Four, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Hercules, Rocket Robinhood, The New Casper Cartoon Show, The Beatles, Roger Ramjet, The Porky Pig Show, The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, Huckleberry Hound, Johnny Quest, Milton the Monster, Krazy Kat, Underdog, Spider-Man, Shazzan, Supercar, Speed Racer, Quick Draw McGraw, Magilla Gorilla, and believe it or not, the list could go on!

In the mid-‘60s, animated films were made in North America. Among the remarkably wide variety of wholesome cartoon programming offered were The Flintstones (left) and The Jetsons. © & ™ 2002 Cartoon Network.

Studios like DePatie Freleng, Hanna-Barbara, Paramount Cartoon Studios and Filmation Assoc., were pumping out absolutely incredible numbers of shows, and thousands of animation artists were gainfully employed. Clokey Productions was busy turning out episode after episode of the charming stop motion series, Davey and Goliath, and the ever-popular Gumby Adventure Series, the first real 3D animation to enjoy such mass appeal.