World Animation

1920's to 1930's
United Kingdom
George Studdy
Pioneer in the commercialisation of animation
He started as a cartoonist for magazines. Including The Sketch.
When his puppy character Bonzon became popular enogh to sell merch, Studdy was commisioned to make a series of animated shorts.
Animation of a dog - 2946 (1920)

France
Fernand Leger
Influentual Abstract/Avant-garde animation
Mixture of painting on film, stop frame animation and live action film.
The Mechanical Ballet (1924)

Germany
Lotte Reinger
He used a cutout silhouette style and the first film to use a form of multiple plane camera to get 2D animation a feeling of depth
The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1925/1926)

Walter Ruttman
Formulated a theory of abstract cinema that he described as "painting with time".
He worked on Lotte Reiniger's film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1925).
Lichtspiel Opus I (1921)
Lichtspiel Opus II (1923)
Lichtspiel Opus III (1924)
Lichtspiel Opus IV (1925)

Hans Richter
He made 3 early abstract films of minimalist animated geometric shapes in the 1920's
Rhythmus 21 (1923)
Rhythmus 23 (1923)
Rhythmus 25 (1923/1925)
Combined live action with animation and used more advanced camera tricks to overlay patterns and used focal properties of the lens to blur and smear imagery.
Befriended Viking Eggeling.
Film Study (1926)

Germany/Sweden
Viking Eggeling
Eggeling believed art should encompass political, ethical and scientific idealogys.
He left Sweden and his early experiments were funded by German film studio UFA who supported avant-garde.
He made the minor classic of abstract film.
Diagonal Symthonies (1924)

1930's to 1960's
France/Russia
Ladislaw Starewicz
Created first feature film The Tale of the Fox (1930) which took 10 years to make
Features Starewicz signature animation style of humanised animals wearing clothes and standing upright. His stories were based on Dutch and French Folks Tales.
An anti-Semitic version of the story was published in 1937, which may have attracted interest in the film from Nazi Germany. The anti-Semitic version of this story was animated in 1943 (funded by the Nazis), but not a full release.

France/Czech Republic
Berthold Bartosch
Moved to Berlin in 1919 and collaberated with other animators such as Lotte Reiniger, Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter and Walter Ruttmann.
Bartosch filmed cutout drawings on multiple levels of glass and achieved soft lighting effects by back-lighting and smearing the glass with soap.
Berthold made the film The Idea (1930) based on a book of stylised woodcuts by Frans Masereel.
The story is about a dreamer who concieves an idea that appeaes in the form of a small naked female figure.
Bartosch worked on an antiwar film which was ironically was destroyed in World War 2.

France/Russia/USA
Alexandra Alexeieff and Claire Parker
They came up with the idea for animation and built a pin-screen device composed of hundreds of pins that slid  in and out of a grid which would produce relief shadow images when lit from the side.
Night on Bald Mountain (1932)
Le Nez (1963)

France/UK/USA
Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin
British Gross and American Hoppin joined up together in paris to create The Joy of Living (La joie de virve) (1934)
They used a form of escapism from the reality of Europe at the time: Fascism and the rise of war.
They were working on Around the world in 80 days by production was interrupted by the war.
A few years later some footage was found of the work and was recreated to make Indian Fantasy (1955)

Russia
Alexander Ptushko
Made The New Gulliver (1935). An adaptation of Gulliver's Travels with a cast of 3000 puppets
At the time Russia's policy geared towards soviet realism and film makers such as Ptushko were instructor to make moralistic works. Thus Children's stories often contained pro-soviet propaganda.

Ivan Ivanov-Vano
The general policy was of animation as a public service to provide traditional folks stories and educational films for children.
Animators such as Ivanov-Vano were told to use the Eclair system which involved rotoscoping from live actors movements. This was abandoned in favor of a ridged system of factory-like cel animation
The Humpbacked Little Horse (1947)

Germany
Oskar Fishinger
His work was defined as "decorative" rather than abstract as he was trying to get around the policies against "degenerate art" put in place by the Nazi's.
Composition in Blue (1935)

UK
Norman Mclaren
Used different techniques including the drawing on films techniques (as pioneered by New Zealander Lan Lye)
Dots (1940)

Bill Larkins
He opened up his own studio in London called Larkins studio's. He produced training films for the army during World War 2 (1940). This studio speaheaded the advance towards a stylised, simplified form of animation. The studio only produced information films.
T for Teacher (1947)

UK/Hungary
John Halas and Joy Bachelor
They made animated propaganda and information films as part of the British war efforts. Both of them believed that animation was an art form that could be use for good.
The studio called Halas & Batchelor experimented with different techniques, from low tech paper cutouts through to computer animation.
The studio produced over 2000 films to TV series and films.

China
Wan Laiming, Wan Guchan, Wan Chachen and Wan Dihuan
The Wan brothers were china's animation pioneers and made china's first animated short film Uproar in the Studio (1924).
When the Japanese invade Shanghai in 1937, the wan brothers made several politically-motivated films in protest of the invasion.
In 1939 they saw Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which inspired them to make China's first animated feature film Princess Iron Fan (1941).

Japan
Kenzo Masaoka
Created the first Japanese animation with sound in 1933 and the first made entrely with cel animation in 1934
He established his own studio, which was part of a larger unit of animation companies when World War 2 broke out.
The Spider and the Tulip (1943)