One of the first known devices used in cartoon animation was the zoetrope. This was a device created by Ting Huan in China around A.D. 180. It featured a convection-powered cylinder that would spin with images on the inside. A viewer would look through slits that showed the illusion of movement on the inside.
With the rise of motion pictures, animation entered a new era. French film director Emile Cohl animated a series of short films about a stick figure clown. The first of these was “Fantasmagorie,” released in 1908.
From the 1930s until the 1960s, movie studios released short animated cartoons that played before feature films. The most prominent of these were Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes cast of characters.
Walt Disney established a new genre of feature films with its 1937 production of “Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs.” Due to its success, Disney became a powerhouse in the film industry and released other classic films such as "Peter Pan," "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella."
Cartoon animation again changed with the advent of computer-generated imagery. Pixar created the first fully computer-animated feature film, "Toy Story," in 1995. Since then, almost all animated cartoon films have moved to computer graphics, including films such as the "Shrek" series, "Finding Nemo," "Monster House," "The Incredibles" and "Toy Story 3."