Popular Shows and Styles
Animation has evolved tremendously over-time, which both Eastern and Western styles having both distinct artistic approaches. Eastern animation, Japanese anime for example, is often known to have a much bigger audience for their animated tv-shows as it is ingrained into their culture. Since Japan has a much larger focus on their anime, there are many-many more studios and artists which has resulted in some incredible work coming from out of east Asia. The Eastern style in known for its sharp lines and consistent "anime-like" character design and artistic style. Western on the other hand, first originated with older shows like Looney Tunes. Cartoons in the west were then associated as something for children, leading to a lot of older cartoons to be low budget and high quanity (a lot of episodes). This has slowly started to change thanks to the popularization of anime in the west, and more and more well-animated shows are starting to release.
Computer-generated imagery, also known as CGI bring entirely different visual expiriences to the table. With the usual goal of cgi to resemble "real life", this is not always the case though. Say, superhero movies for example, try their best to make the CGI look as real as possible, while on the other hand, movies like The Polar Express and Toy Story feel like life-like and more liek youre watching a cartoon. There is also often CGI use in 2D drawn animation in the form either one or a few larger objects or many smaller object that need to move in a single scene. This is due to the use of CGI being much cheaper than having someone draw a bunch of little horse-riders racing into battle. Another form of animation that often goes unnoticed is stop-motion. This is because stop motion is entirely manual usually with clay dolls or something alike. This, while extremely time-consuming, can be really cost-effective and provide a really unique expirience for watchers.
Now I'd like to go over what I think are some of the most innovative and impactful works of animation to me. Starting with Eastern animation, one show I've seen that always stood out to me was Samurai Champloo. This being an older show, had some of the smoothest animation in it's scenes it was almost like the characters were actually alive and moving to me. Another Eastern show which has a lot of impact was Neon Genesis Evangelion. This show had a very specific art-style and devled more into psychological-themes, and is often the motivation piece recited by many authors and story-tellers today. As for Western studios, shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender, took a lot of inspiration from anime at the time. Often praised as the best animated show of all time in the west. Another show, more recently released called Arcane. Is in my opinion, the most beautiful animation series ever. The blend between 2d and 3d animation is really amazing and creates some of the most visually stunning scenes that have been seen in the medium. As for pure CGI, movies like Avatar (not airbender but the one with the blue people), really paved the way for what is the visual fx industry today. With almost all of the scenes being CGI, you almost can' tell that what you're watching is computer generated. Now for stop-motion, movies like Coraline and The Nightmare Before Christmas really pushed the boundries of what this type of animation could achieve, both being highly regarded still to this day.
Samurai Champloo, known for its smooth animation
Arcane, known for its render of 2D and 3D animation
Avatar, well regarded as a giant leap in 3D CGI
Coraline, one of the best stop-motion films ever