A cartoon picture can portray anything from something funny, all the way to something starkingly serious. The way the picture is drawn and colored can great affect the feel that is given off, much like with any other artistic form. While cartoons have long been thought to be an immature art form, the fact is that it is maturing all of the time. New styles are always coming up, as well as subject matter. The kiddy cartoons of years past are being replaced with more mature and artfully drawn mediums.

Just only a few decades ago, no one would’ve thought twice about how childish cartoon pictures are. The technology available at the time didn’t help artists; it wasn’t as sleek and visually appearing as current day cartoons are. Around the mid ’90s, Japanese anime started to get very popular in the United States, causing a whole new level of awareness for cartoons in general.

Before the Japanese animation boom, American animation had been crude at best. Japanese animation was, at the time, far ahead of its international competition. The lines were generally very crisp, colors were very vivid, and the art style was distinctly unique. This boom gave way to a whole new wave of cartoon fans, and opened the doors to a whole new way to draw and perceive any cartoon picture.

While animation and cartoon styles in general were going through their maturing in the 1990′s, computer animation and design was also growing. No longer needing ink and extensive linework, computers helped cartoon artists draw, tweak, and color their work with utter ease. This helped with animation as well, as each frame could be drawn and dealt with on the computer, eliminating the need to individually draw and scan each individual frame. This not only made it much easier to animate, but also made it less expensive and take far less time. Features that would have taken several months or a couple of years before were suddenly finished in a few months or weeks. It was quite a big jump.

Today’s cartoon stills, comics, and full-motion cartoon films are much easier to make and are more visually stunning than ever before. Though the main two reasons for cartoons gaining wider respect and more popularity is due to computer technology and Japanese animation, there have been a few other factors.

Many people find it difficult to look at older cartoon pictures because of how much better they are today. Cartooning may be one of the biggest forms of entertainment and one of the biggest forms of art mediums this century at this rate.

The techniques used to draw your everyday animations have changed drastically over the years, and those methods are only going to change even more as time goes on.

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