The 1920's started already 1919, as far as animation goes, with "Felix the Cat". Throughout the twenties Pat Sullivan's(producer) and Otto Messmer's(animator) goodhearted, innovative and very vivid little fellow amused audiences everywhere. It was a first step towards the fable concept with animals acting as humans and with somewhat simplified characterization. Felix was also the first merchandise success.
However, as time went on and sound entered film, Pat Sullivan was reluctant to go into such a "fling" and Felix vanished. In the mid thirties attempts where made to revive the character(in full color and sound, without Otto Messmer)but it didn't work. Messmers animation style was frugal but very exact and effective.
Felix made his debute in Feline Follies...

 

 

 

In 1921 Max Fleischer and his brother Dave Fliescher established Out of the Inkwell Films with Ko-Ko the Clown as their star. They very much relied on the rotoscope, which they had invented in 1915, a device for transferring filmed live action into animated drawings. They also experimented with the Rotograph, a way to combine live action footage with animation characters. And they tried sound on animation in 1924 with the Ko-Ko Sing-a-long Car-Tunes.
The Fleischers stayed influential in the business through the decades and we'll come back to them.

 

 

 

 

 

In Germany, Lotte Reineger, started making silhouette films. She would continue to do that for 60 years! The technique is called cut-out but with back light where she achieved black silhouette figures as well as subtle backgrounds made up of tissue of various thickness. She had a genuine feeling for movements and sensitive storytelling. She and her husband Karl Koch worked together in Germany but had to flee to France and later England, where she lived the rest of her life. In 1926 she made the first animated feature - The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

 

 

 

 

Also in Germany, in the most heroic decades of modernism in art, a Swedish artist and musician ex, Viking Eggeling, experimented with a new visual language. Teamed with Hans Richter they wanted to create a visual language that worked in the same way as music - you feel it in your body before your brain perceives it, in contrast to images which are always filtered through your mind. They tried different ways but didn't succeed. Finally they turned to animation for rhythm and timing. Eggeling died shortly after the film was finished so no one knows if he thought he finally succeeded. Nevertheless, this sparked a new genre in the field - abstract animation, which is unique for this art form. The film is called The Diagonal Symphony.