129 Fun Facts About Animation

Which French artist made Fantasmagorie (1908), considered the first animated cartoon?

Émile Cohl drew Fantasmagorie as black lines on white paper, then printed it in negative so the stick figure appears chalk-white on black.

Which American game company introduced the definitive zoetrope, with replaceable picture strips, as a toy in 1866?

Milton Bradley got the design from William Ensign Lincoln, a Brown University student who set the viewing slits above the pictures so the strips could be swapped.

Reynaud's 1877 praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with what?

An inner ring of mirrors reflected the picture strip; the reflections stayed nearly stationary as the drum turned, giving a brighter, less distorted image than the zoetrope's slits.

Which Belgian physicist invented the phenakistiscope around December 1832, simultaneously with Austria's Simon Stampfer?

Joseph Plateau preferred to call his spinning disc the fantascope; phénakisticope, the name that stuck, was coined by a Paris firm selling copies he had no part in.

The 1906 film Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, an early hand-drawn animation, was drawn on what surface?

Blackton drew the faces in chalk on a blackboard, filming each change frame by frame; he had co-founded Vitagraph Studios and performed 'lightning sketch' acts on film.

Winsor McCay first showed Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) not in cinemas but as an interactive part of what?

McCay performed Gertie in his vaudeville act, giving her spoken commands on stage; a live-action prologue was added after William Randolph Hearst curtailed his touring.

Winsor McCay's most ambitious film (1918) recreated which 1915 event?

The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918) took McCay 22 months and a claimed 25,000 drawings; he made it in his own time, rebelling against his employer William Randolph Hearst, who had him drawing anti-war cartoons.

El Apóstol (1917), considered the first feature-length animated film, was made in which country?

Quirino Cristiani made El Apóstol in Argentina, satirising President Hipólito Yrigoyen; the only known copy burned in a 1926 fire at producer Federico Valle's studio.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), the oldest surviving animated feature, used what technique?

Lotte Reiniger's silhouette cutouts were cardboard and thin lead figures moved frame by frame under the lens, much like Wayang shadow puppets; the first prints were colour-tinted.

Which pre-digital animation device is Lotte Reiniger, maker of Prince Achmed, credited with first devising in 1923-26?

The multiplane camera is credited to Reiniger: layering flat planes at different depths gave her films a parallax that Disney later industrialised with its own 1937 rig.

What mocking nickname did Hollywood insiders give the first cel-animated feature film while it was still in production?

'Disney's Folly' was the insiders' nickname; Walt mortgaged his house to finish the film, which then became the highest-grossing release of 1938.

Which technique, tracing over live-action footage frame by frame, did Max Fleischer invent in 1915?

Rotoscoping let Fleischer trace filmed movement for the Out of the Inkwell series; rival studios could use it freely only after his 1917 patent expired in 1934.

Which cartoon star debuted in 1930 as a floppy-eared French poodle?

Betty Boop began as a poodle in Dizzy Dishes; as animators made her human by 1932, her floppy ears were redrawn as hoop earrings.

'Termite Terrace' was the affectionate nickname for the classic animation department of which studio?

Warner Bros. put Tex Avery's unit in a small building on its Sunset lot in 1935; the crew left within a year, but their nickname for it stuck to the whole cartoon studio.

At which studio did Tex Avery create Droopy, Screwy Squirrel and Red Hot Riding Hood after 1941?

MGM signed Avery in 1941 after he quit the Looney Tunes studio in a row over a cut gag ending The Heckling Hare; his wilder cartoons there won adult fans too.

Which Chuck Jones short topped Jerry Beck's 1994 book The 50 Greatest Cartoons?

What's Opera, Doc? has Elmer Fudd hunt his rabbit foe through a Wagner pastiche, singing 'Kill the wabbit' to the Ride of the Valkyries; it joined the National Film Registry in 1992.

Which studio made TV's Ruff and Reddy far more cheaply than its founders' Tom and Jerry shorts?

Hanna-Barbera cut costs with limited animation, reusing drawings and moving as little as possible; Chuck Jones dismissed such TV cartoons as 'illustrated radio'.

Which 1960 series was the first animated show to air in prime time?

The Flintstones took its set-up from the sitcom The Honeymooners, whose star Jackie Gleason later said he had considered suing; it ran six seasons in prime time.

Before becoming a half-hour series in 1989, The Simpsons began as shorts on which variety programme?

The Tracey Ullman Show ran 48 Simpsons shorts from April 1987; the family looked crude because the animators simply traced Matt Groening's rough sketches, which he expected them to tidy.

Ray Harryhausen's celebrated fight between three actors and seven living skeletons is in which 1963 film?

Jason and the Argonauts (1963) expanded the single-skeleton duel Harryhausen had animated for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad five years earlier; the sequence took him over four months.

What did stop-motion pioneer Ladislas Starevich use as protagonists around 1910?

Dead insects were his cast: live stag beetles stopped moving or died under hot studio lights, so Starevich wired the legs of dried specimens, as in The Cameraman's Revenge (1912).

Which 2000 film, co-produced with DreamWorks, was Aardman's first feature?

Chicken Run, Aardman's first feature, borrows from The Great Escape: hens on a Yorkshire egg farm plot a breakout before the owner's new machine turns them into pies.

Nick Park's Creature Comforts (1989) matched animated zoo animals with recordings of real people discussing what?

Their homes were the topic: the big cat griping about the cold was voiced by Park's Brazilian friend, and the short beat Park's own A Grand Day Out to the Oscar.

Wallace, the cheese-loving inventor of Wallace & Gromit, is especially fond of which cheese?

Wensleydale is Wallace's favourite, and the films' mentions gave the Yorkshire cheese a sales boost; his accent comes from the Holme Valley of West Yorkshire.

Stop-motion studio Laika (Coraline, Kubo) is owned by the co-founder of which company?

Nike co-founder Phil Knight bought into Will Vinton Studios in 1998, took control and renamed it Laika in 2005; his son Travis Knight became its president and CEO.

In which city was the stop-motion for Rankin/Bass 'Animagic' specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer animated?

Tokyo's MOM Production, under animator Tadahito Mochinaga, shot the puppets frame by frame for the New York firm, while the early voice casts recorded in Toronto.

Toy Story (1995), the first entirely computer-animated feature film, was directed by whom?

John Lasseter had been fired by Disney in the 1980s for pushing computer animation; a decade later Disney released his Toy Story, made at Pixar.

Shrek took the first Best Animated Feature Oscar in March 2002 by beating which Pixar film from 2001?

Monsters, Inc. lost the animated prize but still won that night: Randy Newman's 'If I Didn't Have You' took Best Original Song, his first Oscar after 15 losing nominations.

Which furry forest spirit from a 1988 Hayao Miyazaki film became his studio's logo?

Totoro also became the face of a real conservation trust, the Totoro Hometown Fund, which buys woodland in Saitama with donations to save it from development.

Which 2023 film, made after Hayao Miyazaki came out of retirement, won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature?

The Boy and the Heron opened in Japan with no trailers, stills or synopsis, only a single poster, and still won Miyazaki his second Oscar in the category.

Flow (2024), the first independent film to win Best Animated Feature, was animated with which open-source software?

Blender, free software anyone can modify, built the whole film; its director switched to it in 2019 for the real-time renderer, used no storyboards, and gave the animals no dialogue.

The animated film Flow, about a cat surviving a great flood, was the first Oscar winner from which country?

Latvia's first Oscar came at the March 2025 ceremony, where Flow beat Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot; the statuette was later displayed at the Latvian National Museum of Art.

Which Japanese animation studio took its name from an Italian desert-wind word that was also a wartime scouting plane's nickname?

Studio Ghibli was named by Hayao Miyazaki, an aircraft obsessive, after the Caproni Ca.309 Ghibli; he wanted the studio to 'blow a new wind through the anime industry'.

Which artist directed the cyberpunk landmark Akira (1988), adapting his own manga?

Katsuhiro Otomo directed the film while his manga was unfinished; the comic ran in Young Magazine from 1982 to 1990, two years past the film.

In Into the Spider-Verse, why was Miles animated 'on twos' while Peter was on ones?

His inexperience: Miles got a new drawing only every other frame, so he moves less smoothly than the seasoned Peter, who got a fresh one every frame.

Persepolis (2007) follows a girl growing up during the 1979 revolution in which country?

Iran is where Marjane Satrapi grew up; she adapted her own graphic memoir, and a film foundation tied to Tehran's government protested when Cannes selected it.

Ari Folman's animated documentary Waltz with Bashir traces his lost memories as a soldier in which conflict?

The 1982 Lebanon War, and the Sabra and Shatila massacre, are what Folman tries to recall; the film won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and was banned in Lebanon.

Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist (2010) was based on an unproduced 1956 script by which French filmmaker?

Jacques Tati wrote the script in 1956 and never filmed it; Chomet's version moves the story to Edinburgh, with the magician drawn to resemble Tati himself.

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival, founded in 1960, is in which country?

France hosts it: the animation days began beside the Cannes festival in 1956, were drowned out by its film stars, and moved to lakeside Annecy in 1960.

Which voice actress, famous as Rocky the flying squirrel, first proposed the Annie Awards, presented since 1972?

June Foray proposed them to ASIFA-Hollywood because animation had no awards of its own; the first, in 1972, honoured Max and Dave Fleischer.

Frank Thomas and which fellow animator wrote The Illusion of Life (1981), setting out Disney's twelve principles?

Ollie Johnston, Thomas's friend since their Stanford days, co-wrote it; Brad Bird later gave the pair voice cameos in The Iron Giant and The Incredibles.

In squash and stretch, which property of the animated object should stay constant?

Its volume must stay constant: stretch a ball vertically and it has to get narrower to compensate, the first of Disney's twelve principles.

The 'cel' in cel animation is a contraction of the name of which material?

Celluloid, the flammable cellulose nitrate sheet, was the original material; studios later switched to more stable cellulose acetate.

Between 1927 and 1930, what frame rate became the standard for 35 mm sound film?

24 frames per second was adopted with sound film as a compromise within the 22 to 26 fps range at which theatres had been projecting silents.

Which of Disney's twelve principles of animation has a character wind up before a big move, like crouching before a jump?

Anticipation prepares the audience for what comes next: a pitcher drawing his arm back makes the throw that follows read as real.

Which animator of Steamboat Willie left Disney in 1930 and launched Flip the Frog?

Ub Iwerks drew most of Steamboat Willie himself; he later returned to Disney, doing effects work on Mary Poppins and Hitchcock's The Birds.

What was the first feature film from the studio Don Bluth founded after quitting Disney in 1979?

The Secret of NIMH renamed the novel's heroine Mrs. Frisby as Mrs. Brisby after Wham-O refused to waive its Frisbee trademark, so lines had to be re-recorded.

What was DreamWorks Animation's first feature film, released in October 1998?

Antz was moved up from March 1999 to 2 October 1998 so it would beat Pixar's rival insect film A Bug's Life into cinemas, amid a public feud between the two studios.

Which Richard Williams feature, begun in 1964, was finally released in 1995 as Arabian Knight?

The Thief and the Cobbler, Williams's decades-long passion project, was taken over by its completion bond company in 1992 and released in a re-edited form as Arabian Knight in 1995.

Which 1937 film was the first cel-animated feature ever made?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in December 1937; Walt received an honorary Oscar for it as one full-size statuette and seven miniature ones, presented by Shirley Temple.

Which 1991 Disney film was the first animated feature nominated for Best Picture?

Beauty and the Beast lost Best Picture to The Silence of the Lambs, but its title song and Alan Menken's score both won Oscars.

Which Pixar film was the first animated film to open the Cannes Film Festival, in 2009?

Up sends widower Carl Fredricksen floating to South America in a house hung from helium balloons, keeping a promise to his late wife; it was also Pixar's first 3D release.

In Spirited Away, what becomes of Chihiro's parents after gorging on food in the abandoned town?

Turned into pigs for their greed, they can only be freed by Chihiro working in the bathhouse for spirits run by the witch Yubaba.

Who actually directed The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), which Tim Burton conceived and produced?

Henry Selick directed because Burton was committed to Batman Returns and wary of stop motion's slow pace; Danny Elfman wrote the songs and sang Jack Skellington's part.

Which comedian voiced the Genie in Aladdin (1992), improvising many of his lines?

Robin Williams took scale pay on condition that Disney not use his voice heavily in marketing; when it did, he fell out with the studio and skipped the first sequel.

Coraline (2009) is based on a novella by which author?

Neil Gaiman began the novella in 1990 and, as he finished it over a decade later, personally invited a stop-motion director he admired to film it; it became Laika's first feature.

What is the name of the 11-year-old girl whose mind hosts Inside Out (2015)?

Riley was inspired by director Pete Docter's daughter Elie, who grew quieter and more reserved around that age and left him wondering what was going on in her head.

In Pixar's WALL-E, what does the W in the robot's name stand for?

Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class. Sound designer Ben Burtt, who also voiced him, recorded about 2,500 sounds, and most characters in the film's first act never speak a word.

In How to Train Your Dragon (2010), what does Hiccup name the Night Fury he befriends?

Toothless is so named for his retractable teeth; the film is based on Cressida Cowell's 2003 novel and set on the Viking island of Berk.

Under what title was Disney's 2016 film about rabbit cop Judy Hopps released in the UK and much of Europe?

Zootropolis was reportedly chosen because a Danish zoo had already claimed the name Zootopia for its own expansion; Disney said only that it wanted 'a unique title that works for UK audiences'.

Brad Bird's The Iron Giant (1999) is loosely based on a 1968 children's novel by which British poet?

Ted Hughes wrote The Iron Man in 1968 to comfort his children after the death of their mother, Sylvia Plath; US editions became The Iron Giant to avoid Marvel's hero.

Which two characters from rival studios first shared a scene, as skydivers, in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)?

Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny fall together with Eddie Valiant; Bugs's studio insisted he get exactly as much screen time as Mickey, and Bob Hoskins acted opposite characters drawn in later.

Which conductor, seen shaking hands with Mickey Mouse on screen, led the performances in Fantasia (1940)?

Leopold Stokowski met Walt Disney by chance at a Hollywood restaurant and offered to conduct The Sorcerer's Apprentice for nothing; that short grew into the whole film.

Which song from The Prince of Egypt (1998) won the Oscar for Best Original Song?

'When You Believe' won for Stephen Schwartz alone: he left Babyface off the Oscar entry because the pop additions sung by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey were not in the film.

Which 2016 Makoto Shinkai body-swap romance became, for a time, the highest-grossing anime film worldwide?

Your Name grew from Makoto Shinkai's 2011 visit to a fishing village wrecked by the Tōhoku tsunami; thinking 'this could have been my town', he built a story on swapped places.

Frozen (2013) was loosely inspired by which 1844 fairy tale?

The Snow Queen, Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 tale, went through several Disney treatments before the studio commissioned Frozen in 2011; Elsa began as a villain.

Which photoreal Disney remake passed Frozen in August 2019 to top the chart of highest-grossing animated films?

The Lion King remake passed Frozen's $1.28 billion worldwide in August 2019 and finished above $1.6 billion, though whether photoreal CGI counts as animation was disputed.

Shrek (2001) was loosely based on a 1990 picture book by which author-illustrator?

William Steig published the picture book in 1990; Steven Spielberg bought the film rights in 1991, and the project moved to DreamWorks after the studio's 1994 founding.

Which comedian originally recorded most of Shrek's dialogue before dying in 1997?

Chris Farley had recorded most of the ogre's lines when he died in December 1997; his replacement Mike Myers later asked to redo the whole part in a Scottish accent.

Which Pixar film became the best-selling DVD of all time, with over 40 million copies sold by 2006?

Finding Nemo drew on director Andrew Stanton's guilt as an overprotective father: on a walk in the park he was so busy guarding his son that he missed the outing itself.

Disney's 1994 film about the lion cub Simba draws notably on which Shakespeare play?

Hamlet supplies the template: Simba's uncle Scar murders his father and seizes the throne, and the father's ghost urges the exiled prince to return.

How was the pilot episode of South Park made, before later episodes moved to computers?

Paper cutouts of construction paper, shot in stop motion, made the pilot; the series debuted on Comedy Central on 13 August 1997 and later mimicked the look in software.

Which 1940 Disney film was the first animated feature to win a competitive Academy Award?

Pinocchio won Oscars for its score and for 'When You Wish Upon a Star', yet lost money at first because the Second World War had cut off its European and Asian markets.

Mickey Mouse was created as a replacement for which earlier Disney character owned by Universal?

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was lost in 1928 when distributor Charles Mintz, working for Universal, took the character and hired away most of Disney's animators.

What happened to Steamboat Willie on 1 January 2024?

Copyright expiry after 95 years put the 1928 short in the public domain, freeing that early version of its mouse star for anyone to use; a slasher-film trailer starring him appeared the same day.

Which producer ran the Looney Tunes studio from 1933 until selling it in 1944?

Leon Schlesinger set up his own studio in 1933 when Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising walked out, taking their star Bosko with them; he ran it for eleven years.

Which of Matt Groening's comic strips caught James L. Brooks's eye and led to The Simpsons?

Life in Hell was what Brooks asked Groening to adapt; fearing he would lose the strip's rights, Groening sketched the Simpson family in the lobby instead.

Spirited Away shared the top prize at which European film festival in 2002?

Berlin's jury split the Golden Bear between Miyazaki's fantasy and Bloody Sunday, a drama about British paratroopers shooting civil-rights marchers in Derry in 1972.

Which 2020 anime film broke Spirited Away's 19-year Japanese box-office record?

Demon Slayer: Mugen Train opened in October 2020 with rival releases delayed by the pandemic, so cinemas gave it far more screens than usual; it beat the old record in 73 days.

What did SpongeBob SquarePants creator Stephen Hillenburg teach before he became an animator?

Marine biology was Hillenburg's first career, and the teaching comic he drew about tide-pool animals had a co-host called Bob the Sponge.

In Monsters, Inc., what do the monsters harvest from children to power the city of Monstropolis?

Their screams run Monstropolis until Sulley finds that a child's laughter is ten times more powerful and retools the whole factory to collect giggles instead.

In the first Despicable Me film, what does the supervillain Gru plan to steal with a shrink ray?

The Moon is the prize in Gru's bid to become the greatest criminal of the century, and he adopts three orphan girls purely to help him win the shrink ray back.

Which Disney musical follows the Madrigals, a Colombian family whose children receive magical gifts?

Encanto gives each Madrigal child a gift at the age of five, all but its heroine Mirabel, and its songs were written by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Which band's cartoon versions star in Yellow Submarine (1968), though actors spoke their lines?

The Beatles wrote and performed the songs but left the speaking to voice actors, turning up in person only for a brief live-action cameo in the final scene.

Which fictional company makes the gadgets that backfire on Wile E. Coyote in Road Runner cartoons?

Acme Corporation sells the anvils, rocket skates and giant rubber bands that fail at the worst possible moment, a running gag across the Road Runner shorts.

Which cartoon duo created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera won seven Oscars for short films?

Tom and Jerry first chased each other in 1940, and their haul tied Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies for the most wins in the animated short category.

Which spilled substance gave the Powerpuff Girls their superpowers in Professor Utonium's lab?

Chemical X also made the girls' arch-enemy: Mojo Jojo was the professor's chimpanzee assistant, caught in the very same accident that created them.

Which country makes Bluey, the cartoon about a Blue Heeler puppy that the BBC helped commission?

Australia's Ludo Studio makes Bluey in Queensland, and Brisbane, the state capital, inspired its setting.

In Disney's Tangled, which kitchen item does Rapunzel use to knock out the outlaw Flynn Rider?

A frying pan hits Flynn several times before the pair hold their first conversation, moments after he climbs into her tower to hide from his pursuers.

In Pixar's Ratatouille, what is the name of the rat who dreams of becoming a chef in Paris?

Remy steers the restaurant's garbage boy like a marionette, tugging on his hair while hidden beneath a chef's toque.

Pixar's hopping mascot Luxo Jr., who first appeared in a two-minute 1986 short, is what kind of object?

A desk lamp took Pixar to the Academy Awards for the first time: the short, in which little Luxo Jr. plays with a ball until it deflates, was nominated for Best Animated Short.

In Pixar's Cars, in which faded Route 66 town does racer Lightning McQueen end up stranded?

Radiator Springs was a bustling stop for drivers until a new interstate highway bypassed the town and drained its business traffic.

In Disney's The Little Mermaid, which sea witch offers to make Ariel human for three days?

Ursula owes her look to the American drag performer Divine and her voice to the actress Pat Carroll.

In The Incredibles, which fashion designer refuses to add capes to the superhero suits she creates?

Edna Mode bans capes because they have got several superheroes killed, and the tiny designer is voiced by the film's own director, Brad Bird.

What is the name of the brightly painted van driven by the teenage ghost hunters in Scooby-Doo?

The Mystery Machine is painted in psychedelic colours, and it has carried four teenagers and their talking Great Dane from one haunting to the next since 1969.

Which Pixar film about Merida, a Scottish princess with a bow, was the studio's first with a female lead?

Brave gave Pixar its first female protagonist, and the studio built a new in-house animation system, called Presto, to make the film.

In the Ice Age films, what is the sabre-toothed squirrel Scrat forever trying to collect and bury?

An acorn is all Scrat wants, and his wordless squeaks were performed by Chris Wedge, who also directed the first film.

Phil Collins wrote and performed the songs for which 1999 Disney film, winning an Oscar for one of them?

Tarzan earned Collins the Academy Award for Best Original Song for its lullaby, You'll Be in My Heart.

Which Japanese film features the Catbus, a giant bus-shaped cat that carries a girl to her lost sister?

My Neighbor Totoro made its round forest spirit so popular that the creature became the mascot and official logo of Studio Ghibli.

Which two-time Best Actor Oscar winner was cast as the voice of Sheriff Woody for the first Toy Story?

Tom Hanks suggested that Pixar hire his brother Jim to perform the cowboy's voice for video games, toys and theme-park attractions.

Which actor voices and sings the demigod Maui, owner of a magical shape-shifting fish hook, in Disney's Moana?

Dwayne Johnson, the former wrestler known as The Rock, sings You're Welcome, a number written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and at first meant for Moana herself.

Which comedian voiced Mushu, the small dragon demoted from guarding the heroine's family in Disney's Mulan?

Eddie Murphy recorded Mushu's lines in his own private studio because of scheduling conflicts, and the dragon was kept small so he would not overwhelm Mulan on screen.

Which actor voices Po, the noodle-serving giant panda at the centre of the Kung Fu Panda films?

Jack Black voices Po in the feature films, while Mick Wingert took over the panda for two television series and several video games before Black returned for The Dragon Knight.

Which actor voiced both Emmet in The Lego Movie and Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie?

Chris Pratt later voiced the title cat in The Garfield Movie, his only screen role in the year it came out.

Which voice actor, known as the Man of a Thousand Voices, performed Tweety, Sylvester and Yosemite Sam?

Mel Blanc won an on-screen credit at a time when voice actors rarely got one, asking for it after his studio boss refused him a pay rise.

Which actress, who arrived intending to audition for Lisa, was cast as the voice of Bart Simpson in 1987?

Nancy Cartwright found the sister's part thinly described, asked to read for the bratty brother instead, and was offered the role on the spot.

Which Star Wars actor first voiced the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, which began in 1992?

Mark Hamill, cinema's Luke Skywalker, went on to play Batman's arch-enemy across films and video games, earning Annie Award nominations and a BAFTA Game Award.

Which Broadway star provided the singing voices of both Princess Jasmine in Aladdin and Mulan?

Lea Salonga, the first Asian actress to win a Tony Award, sang for both heroines while other actresses spoke their lines.

Which Hollywood legend, a title-winning racing driver himself, voiced the retired racer Doc Hudson in Pixar's Cars?

Paul Newman won several national championships in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and he retired from acting the year after Cars reached cinemas.

Which Walt Disney short was the first cartoon in full three-strip Technicolor and the first to win an Oscar?

Flowers and Trees was already being made in monochrome when Walt Disney agreed to try the new process and ordered the cartoon redone in colour.

Which artist, honoured in Japan as the God of Manga, created the 1963 television series Astro Boy?

Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy so impressed Stanley Kubrick that the director invited him to be art director on 2001: A Space Odyssey, an offer the busy artist had to turn down.

Which 1990 Disney adventure was the first feature film created entirely digitally, using the CAPS ink-and-paint system?

The Rescuers Down Under had its drawings inked, painted and composited inside computers, a process that made the hand-painting of cels obsolete at Disney.

Which Pixar short about a tiny one-man band escaping a baby was the first computer-animated film to win an Oscar?

Tin Toy caught Disney's attention and led to the agreement to make Toy Story, which borrowed several of the short's ideas.

Which tech entrepreneur funded the 1986 spin-off of Lucasfilm's computer graphics group as the company Pixar?

Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder, kept raising his stake until a total investment of $50 million gave him control of the entire company.

Which Disney character starred in Der Fuehrer's Face, the 1943 anti-Nazi short that won an Academy Award?

Donald Duck dreams he is a factory worker in Nazi Germany, then wakes relieved to find himself in the United States; the short was made to sell war bonds.

Which director made Fritz the Cat (1972), the first American animated film to be given an X rating?

Ralph Bakshi made his directing debut with the film, adapting Robert Crumb's comic strip about a glib, womanising cat in 1960s New York.

Where in Missouri did Walt Disney run Laugh-O-Gram, an early cartoon studio that went bankrupt in 1923?

Kansas City's Laugh-O-Gram collapsed after a distributor failed to pay, so Disney sold his filming equipment to buy a one-way ticket to Hollywood.

What joking nickname did Walt Disney give the core group of animators who shaped his studio's classic features?

The Nine Old Men was a joke: the phrase was a 1930s label for the Supreme Court's elderly justices, and Disney gave it to animators who were nowhere near retirement.

Which 1967 film was the final animated feature produced by Walt Disney, who died while it was being made?

The Jungle Book began as a dark, sinister take on Kipling's Mowgli stories until Disney, wanting a family film, replaced its writer and songwriter.

Which optical toy is a disc with a bird on one side and a cage on the other, twirled on strings?

The thaumatrope, introduced in 1825 and usually credited to John Ayrton Paris, blends its two pictures into one when spun, so the bird seems to sit inside the cage.

Which early projector, developed in the 17th century, threw pictures painted on glass slides onto a wall or screen?

The magic lantern could suggest motion by projecting two glass slides together, one fixed and one moved by hand, and showmen rolled it on rails for ghostly phantasmagoria shows.

John Barnes Linnett's 1868 patent for the Kineograph is the oldest known record of which simple animation toy?

The flip book was the first form of animation to use a straight sequence of pictures rather than a circle, and in 1894 it was mechanised as the Mutoscope.

Which photographer's 1878 picture series The Horse in Motion showed a running horse with all four hooves in the air?

Eadweard Muybridge went on to project his motion studies from painted glass discs with a device he called the zoopraxiscope, before flexible film strips existed.

Which theory was long claimed to explain why the pictures in a zoetrope or on a cinema screen appear to move?

Persistence of vision holds that an image lingers in the eye for an instant after it has gone, and the theory was being disputed long before cinema arrived in 1895.

Which physician, best known for a famous reference book, wrote an 1824 study of an optical illusion in wheel spokes?

Peter Roget presented his work in December 1824, almost three decades before he published his Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases in 1852.

Which silent cartoon star, as a doll on a turntable, served as the test image in RCA's 1928 television experiments?

Felix the Cat was created in 1919 at Pat Sullivan's studio, where Otto Messmer animated him, and made his debut under the name Master Tom.

Which character was the star of Out of the Inkwell, the Fleischer brothers' major cartoon series of the silent era?

Koko the Clown began with film of Dave Fleischer in a clown costume, and he was only given his name in 1924, six years after his first appearance.

Which 1920s Walt Disney series placed a live-action girl and a cartoon cat called Julius in an animated world?

The Alice Comedies began with Alice's Wonderland, a 1923 short that Disney made while his previous studio was failing, with Virginia Davis as the girl.

Which sing-along aid, moving across the lyrics on screen, did Max Fleischer's Song Car-Tunes pioneer in the 1920s?

A bouncing ball led cinema audiences through the words, and some of the three-minute films used the Phonofilm sound-on-film process before the talkies took over.