Many people associate short animation with consumable light entertainment such as Tom and Jerry, Family Guy, and Bugs Bunny. But with greater variety of artists than feature-length animation, short animation has more work at the leading edge of the field.

Think of the dominance Pixar and Warner Brothers have over the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, as opposed to the diversity of nominees and winners in the short animation equivalent. Ireland produces quite a few animations and has a number of studios and training programmes.

The history of short animation is tied up in the Cold War. Since the establishment of studios in the 1930s, the West has tended towards commercially viable work – with a focus on productivity – while those in socialist countries ventured into art and experiment.

The major studios in the US were commercial enterprises with competition and questions of profit, while animators in the Soviet Union were paid by the Academy of Film regardless of their product’s profitability, and thus were free to pursue artistic vision. So while Walt Disney executives worried about the figures of their viewing audience and Hanna-Barbera drowned everything with canned laughter, Soyuzmultfilm, a large animation studio in Moscow responsible for over 1,500 movies, built a reputation for producing a wide variety of artistically innovative animations that are still considered as the greatest of all time, such as the classic Hedgehog in the Fog (1975).

As a result, in former Soviet countries there is a greater awareness and regard for animators as artists. Hedgehog in the Fog, for example, has a statue in Kiev, and in 1988 it appeared on a Russian stamp.

The demise of the Soviet Union, however, has left artists struggling for funding. Yuriy Norshteyn, who created Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales (1978), has been unable to finish his feature-length version of Gogol’s The Overcoat, mainly due to financial constraints.

Long before then, though, the Soviets had taught the world about the value of short animation, and their work influenced governments in the West, and private institutions, to support short animation efforts as art.

The National Film Board of Canada, for example, helped Caroline Leaf become one of the most experimental animators of her generation. Her techniques include photographing sand on a lightbox and scratching on 70mm colour film. My personal favourite of hers is The Street (1975), where she mixed paint with glycerine. This created a blotchy and out-of-proportion childishness to the images, which suited the voice of the young Jewish boy who was waiting for his grandmother to die, so he could get her room.

The animation industry in Britain was greatly affected by the establishment of Channel 4 in 1981, as the organisation made point of funding and distributing experimental material and thus promoting the work of those who worked outside the mainstream such as Alison De Vera and Joanna Quinn. The most successful piece is probably The Snowman, a Christmas special in 1982. While Channel 4 was also involved in the making of the Cold War satire When the Wind Blows (1986), arguably its most significant contribution was the support of Aardman Studios for their fabulous series Conversation Pieces.

Nick Park won an Academy Award for Creature Comforts in 1990, which allowed him to produce several critically acclaimed feature-length animated films and for Aardman Studios to become the face of British animation. Channel 4 continue to support independent short animation through short film schemes, which include Mesh, aimed at computer generated animation, Animate!, aimed at more alternative animation, and 4mations, a showcase website for user submitted content.

Following Channel 4’s example, in 1992, BBC Wales commissioned mostly Russian animation studios to produce a series called Shakespeare: the Animated Tales, for the Welsh language channel S4C.

Given freedom, funding, and time, the artistic ingenuity of animators is incredible. Take Alexander Petrov’s beautiful adaptation of The Old Man and the Sea (1999) as an example. To create his masterpiece, Petrov painted onto an illuminated glass surface with his fingers and photographed the results. The ten-minute piece took three years and 29,000 takes to complete, and the following year he won an Academy Award. From Suzie Templeton’s puppets (Dog and Peter and the Wolf) to the charcoal of Michael Dudok de Wit’s Father and Daughter (2000) and simple stick figures and crumpled paper of Don Hertzfeldt, animation reveals its inherent limitlessness as storytelling and as art.

US studios have led innovation in techniques to improve productivity. An example is this is the development of cel animation. By layering the images of characters on cellulose acetates over a static background, the number of times objects have to be redrawn is reduced. This produces a style typical to television cartoons, where backgrounds and cycles are often repeated. In the 1960s, Osamu Tezuka, a Japanese animator, simplified US techniques to work off a tight schedule with inexperienced staff, and so became the father of anime, a style of animation based on manga and strongly associated with Japan. The trademark large eyes, introduced by Tezuka, are inspired by Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse and Bambi, and are central to the over exaggerated expressions typical of anime characters. However, with repeating backgrounds and character positions, cel animation often had a cheap look, so a higher quality and just as efficient alternative was required.

In the early 1980s, US studios such as Disney and LucasFilm, began investing in computer graphics and visual effects. Personally, my introduction to this came when a nerdy babysitter brought a videotaped conference about graphic animation to our house. I still remember my amazement at seeing two particular pieces, which I later discovered were written and directed by John Lasseter. The first was Luxo Jr. (1986), the story of a playful and cheeky desk lamp which is frequently used now with the Pixar logo, at the start of their films. The second was Tin Toy (1988), winner of an Academy Award and the progenitor of Toy Story. Unlike a lot of groundbreaking technology, neither seems to have dated the way I would have expected.

Since then, Pixar has grown to dominate feature-length animation and also produce a large number of quality short animations, although the last 3D animated film to win an Academy Award for short animation was Ryan (2004), and that was a dark tale based on an interview with an old artist addicted to drugs and alcohol.

Nowadays, animation is an accessible form of expression to anyone with the correct software. The most common is Adobe Flash, which mimics the style and principles of cel animation. Although Flash has since evolved into an incredibly versatile tool, its animations often maintain the look and feel of cel animation. Its credential as a very accessible technique bears a nasty double edge, as the large number of parody and stoner cartoons it is used to produce further cheapens the look.

The animation industry in Ireland, despite the presence of a few small independent studios in the 1970s, didn’t really take off until Sullivan Bluth Studios, responsible for the box office smash An American Tail (1986), decided to move their headquarters from California to Dublin in 1985 to take advantage of the IDA’s new tax incentives and Ireland’s low wages. This was one of the few companies producing work to rival Disney’s monopoly. The Land Before Time (1988), a critical and financial success, was the first production from the Irish studio.

This encouraged other American companies to follow the same model, and by 1990, three large studios (the other two being Emerald City and Murakami Wolf Swenson) employed 530 people in Dublin.

The resulting demand for skilled animators prompted the formation of animation courses in Ballyfermot Senior College and the then Dun Laoghaire College of Art and Design. With help from animation director Don Bluth, Ballyfermot taught a traditional, commercial style typical of US studios, while Dun Laoghaire concentrated more on the experimental, artistic style, giving the capital unusual spoils of both schools.

Although all three of the American studios had closed by the mid-’90s, the foundations were laid: two third-level courses, a large number of experienced Irish animators, and a successful campaign to persuade the Irish Film Board to reverse its policy of not aiding the animation industry. Now there are many internationally recognised Irish animation studios, such as Cartoon Saloon, Monster Films, Boulder Media, Brown Bag Films and JAM Media.

In 2001, Fifty Percent Grey by Ruairi Robinson and Give Up Yer Aul Sins by Brown Bag Films were both nominated for an Academy Award. And this year Cartoon Saloon produced the beautifully animated and critically acclaimed feature-length animation, The Secret of Kells.

Bryan Butler lives in Dublin