Animation and standards

Children, teenagers, and adults, all generations have heard of or seen animated films, cartoons, and cartoons... Disney, Dreamworks, Pixar, Ghibli, Kyoto Animation, Fortiche Production, the National Film Board of Canada, and many others have allowed us to travel through fabulous and fantastic worlds while being accompanied by more or less endearing characters, pushing us or not to want to join them in their adventures. Who hasn't wished to travel to the universe of Alice in Wonderland, The Lion King, Howl's Moving Castle, or to the depths of the sea with Atlantis? This discipline, which began and proved itself in the late 1800s, is associated with other fields and forms of representation, thus interesting a large number of people. We could consider the years 1900 to 2000 as the "golden age" of animation with so many animators exploring the various possibilities of this discipline and making proposals that are sumptuous, extravagant, or experimental. However, one might wonder today if the vision of animation, with the evolution of technologies and mentalities, has become bland. By bland, we do not accuse animation or the talent of animators, but rather the need not to realize something unique with each proposal in order to adapt to an audience. The desire to create something is becoming less important than creating something that will work in the market for sure. These films, often similar in terms of aesthetics, narrative, and technique, tend to resemble each other. Our problem statement is therefore: "Do animated films tend to be standardized in terms of styles, techniques, and storytelling?" To answer this, firstly, we will talk about the history of animated cinema, its appearance, its beginnings, and its industrialization. Then we will discuss storytelling, tales in animated films, and how major studios represent them. And finally, we will discuss all the phenomena related to the standardization of animation by addressing traditional narrative patterns, phenomena of society and consumer society involving animated films, 2D and 3D techniques, and reuse, ending with the cinema and animated cinema of tomorrow.