Time for big changes. Television entered and stirred up the animation industry. Theatrical shorts were no longer needed as news reels moved to TV news. All the animation departments of the Hollywood companies were closed down by the mid fifties. So Bugs, Porky, Daffy suddenly had to retire. The only thing constant were the Disney Features.
Television now demanded another format at a fraction of the cost. This forced the development of a simplicity in style and animation(limited animation). Like in "Gerald McBoing-Boing...

 

...And in "Rooty-Toot-Toot, both films from UPA...

 

...a Company that also had Mr Magoo, the nearsighted little old man who won two academy awards!

 

 

Norman McLaren spent a lot of time developing the animation department of NFB(National Film Board of Canada)in a true experimental way. In 1952 he made Neighbours, an anti-war film.

 

 

 

In England, the studio Halas and Bachelor, who for ten years had been producing information and propaganda films for Ministry of Information during WW2 and other official institutions, were asked to do Animal Farm as a feature, which they did. The film could be considered as criticism of communism. Some decades later it was revealed that the CIA had financed it. And because of that, a propaganda film.

 

 

 

Jiri Trnka was a Czech animator, illustrator, director in mostly puppet films. His production company received subsidies from the government in Czechoslovakia all through the fifties. A situation that can be pleasant but also slowly choking if misused. Trnka described this in his last film The Hand 1965, which was banned in the USSR for over 20 years.