Limited animation is a process in the overall technique of

traditional animation Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawing, drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation of the 20th century, until there wa ...

that reuses frames of character animation.

Early history

The use of budget-cutting and time-saving animation measures in animation dates back to the earliest commercial animation, including cycled animations, mirror-image and symmetrical drawings, still characters, and other labor-saving methods. In general, the progression was from early productions in which every frame was drawn by hand, independent of each other drawing, toward more limited animation that made use of the same drawings in different ways.

Winsor McCay Zenas Winsor McCay ( – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip ''Little Nemo'' (1905–1914; 1924–1927) and the animated film ''Gertie the Dinosaur'' (1914). For contractual reasons, he w ...

, a man who put an unprecedented amount of detail into his animations, boasted that in his 1914 film, '' Gertie the Dinosaur'', everything moved, including the rocks and blades of grass in the background. In contrast, his 1918 film '' The Sinking of the Lusitania'' progressed to using cels over still backgrounds, while still maintaining a level of detail comparable to that of ''Gertie''. The 1942 ''

Merrie Melodies ''Merrie Melodies'' is an American animated comedy short film series distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was part of the ''Looney Tunes'' franchise and featured many of the same characters. Originally running from August 2, 1931, to Septem ...

'' cartoon '' The Dover Boys'', directed by

Chuck Jones Charles Martin Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, painter, voice actor and filmmaker, best known for his work with Warner Bros. Cartoons on the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of shorts. He ...

, is one of the earliest Warner Bros. cartoons to extensively employ some of the processes of what would become known as "limited animation", particularly its use of characters that either stand still or move so quickly that the actual motion appears to be a blur. This animation technique, an exaggeration of the established practice of squash and stretch, has come to be known as the smear frame.

Countries

United States

Hanna-Barbera Productions Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. ( ; formerly known as H-B Enterprises, Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. and H-B Production Co.), simply and commonly known as Hanna-Barbera, was an American animation studio and production company, which was acti ...

used limited animation throughout its existence. When the company's namesakes,

William Hanna William Denby Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator, voice actor, and musician who is best known for co-creating ''Tom and Jerry'' and providing the vocal effects for the series' title characters. Alongside Joseph B ...

and

Joseph Barbera Joseph Roland Barbera ( ; ; March 24, 1911 – December 18, 2006) was an American animator and cartoonist, best known as the co-founder of the animation studio Hanna-Barbera. Born to Italian Americans, Italian immigrants in New York City, Bar ...

, separated from the MGM studio in 1957, they opted to take a drastically different approach to animation than they had for their fully animated short films; as television screens were much smaller than theater screens at the time, limited animation, with its emphasis on character close-ups and dialogue-based humor, was a better fit for the more intimate home viewer experience. At the time, most feature films (along with animated shorts, including Hanna and Barbera's own work on ''

Tom and Jerry ''Tom and Jerry'' is an American Animated cartoon, animated media franchise and series of comedy short films created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Best known for its 161 theatrical short films by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the series ...

'') were transitioning to the widescreen

CinemaScope CinemaScope is an anamorphic format, anamorphic lens series used, from 1953 to 1967, and less often later, for shooting widescreen films that, crucially, could be screened in theatres using existing equipment, albeit with a lens adapter. Its cr ...

process, which made it more difficult to replicate intimacy;

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...

, though they continued to use full animation, had also used character close-ups and personality-driven humor in their early films. When Disney produced ''

Lady and the Tramp ''Lady and the Tramp'' is a 1955 American Animated film, animated Musical film, musical romantic comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Film Distribution. Based on Ward Greene's 1945 ''Cosmopolitan (magazine) ...

'' in CinemaScope, the process made it difficult to replicate that style, a problem that Hanna-Barbera did not have with smaller, more square television screens. The financial benefits of limited animation led to television animation companies relying on the process extensively in the television era.

Jay Ward Productions Jay Ward Productions, Inc. (sometimes shortened to Ward Productions) is an American animation studio based in Costa Mesa, California. It was founded in 1948 by American animator Jay Ward. As of 2022, the studio was headed by Ward's daughter, Ti ...

relied on limited animation for those reasons, compensating with its heavy

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

satire and a style of

deadpan Deadpan, dry humour, or dry-wit humour is the deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of Comedy, comedic delivery to contrast with the ridiculousness or absurdity of the subject matter. The delivery is meant t ...

comedy that would become a trademark of the studio's style. One of the frequent users of limited animation was HB's Saturday-morning rival Filmation (makers of '' He-Man and the Masters of the Universe'' and '' BraveStarr'') which gave their work a distinct look. Bill Melendez used a form of limited animation to adapt the ''

Peanuts ''Peanuts'' (briefly subtitled ''featuring Good ol' Charlie Brown'') is a print syndication, syndicated daily strip, daily and Sunday strip, Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz. The strip's original run ext ...

'' franchise to television and later film; in addition to the cost and time concerns (especially for his first special '' A Charlie Brown Christmas'', which was given only a $76,000 budget and four months to produce 30 minutes of animation), Meléndez also noted that ''Peanuts'' creator Charles M. Schulz had designed the characters with a flat style well-suited for limited animation. The short-lived Cambria Studios turned out three serials (including ''

Clutch Cargo ''Clutch Cargo'' is an American animated television series created by cartoonist Clark Haas and produced by Cambria Productions, syndicated beginning on March 9, 1959. The series was notable for its limited animation yet imaginative stories, a ...

'') using one of the most inexpensive approaches to animation possible: known as Syncro-Vox, it involved superimposing film of the voice actor's moving lips over a still frame of the character. Disney themselves resorted to some limited animation tricks in an effort to cut its budget during the 1960s, particularly with its usage of

xerography Xerography is a dry photocopying technique. Originally called electrophotography, it was renamed xerography—from the Greek roots , meaning "dry" and , meaning "writing"—to emphasize that unlike reproduction techniques then in use such as c ...

in '' One Hundred and One Dalmatians'', which resulted in artwork with heavier, rougher outlines than had previously been seen in Disney films up to that point. By the 1970s, the usage of limited animation in

Saturday morning cartoon "Saturday-morning cartoon" is a colloquial term for the original animated series and live-action programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the United States on the "Big Three" television networks. The genre was a ...

s had become pervasive. Walter Williams, creator of '' The Mr. Bill Show'', noted that cartoons in the 1970s were so static, he expected the artist's hands to enter the screen at any moment and physically start moving the drawings around. This inspired him to create the "Mr. Hands" character in ''The Mr. Bill Show'', who literally did just that.

Japan

Limited animation proved to be particularly popular in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, such that the Japanese word for animation, ''

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

'', entered the English lexicon as a

loanword A loanword (also a loan word, loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language (the recipient or target language), through the process of borrowing. Borrowing is a metaphorical term t ...

for the distinctive style of Japanese animation that took root there.Anime's Great Deception-The Difference Between Anime and Cartoons
/ref> Anime features scenes of mouth moving with occasional eye blinks, rendered long shots of detailed backgrounds, a low

frame rate Frame rate, most commonly expressed in frame/s, or FPS, is typically the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (Film frame, frames) are captured or displayed. This definition applies to film and video cameras, computer animation, and moti ...

(especially in earlier productions) and rare use of 2D fluidity on motion-blur filled action alongside reused drawings, using style conventions from Japanese comic books (

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

). It also has the benefit of lower cost productions and stylized content as opposed to realistic animation.Animation Styles: What Make Anime Unique-Show Me The Animation.com
/ref> As was the case in the United States, television was a major impetus for the growth of anime in Japan; the country's recovery from World War II led to economic prosperity and a boom in Japanese television ownership, and the development of anime allowed Japan to compete in an animation field where they had, in the era of the

Golden Age of American animation The golden age of American animation was a period that began with the popularization of Sound film, sound synchronized cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the 1960s when theatrical animated shorts started to lose popularity to the newer medi ...

, been lagging well behind. By the 1980s, the Japanese animation field was equal to or better than the American industry, making it cost-effective to send American television series episodes to Japan to be animated, then sent back to be finished; such Japanese animated work was not done in the same style as anime, instead being a hybrid style that was not quite full animation but fuller than the limited animation of anime or late-20th century American television animation.

Philippines

Limited animation made an early history of Philippine animation in the 1970s, established a historical propaganda film '' Tadhana'', directed by Nonoy Marcelo. Unlike any influential animated films in the Philippines, ''Tadhana'''s use of animation is crude but unique with distinctive features. The Philippines has been a popular

offshoring Offshoring is the relocation of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Usually this refers to a company business, although state gover ...

destination for Western animation, due to the country's combination of an extensive understanding of Western culture (in part from its lengthy period as an American territory) and low expense.Ressa, Maria
Filipino Animators in 'toon' with the Times
an

''

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

, Cable News Network, October 14, 1995''The Philippine Animation Industry Landscape
, Tholons, tholons.com, May 2008

References