American animation is any animation created in the United States or by American animators. It has been used as a visual art form for expression, entertainment, news, etc. for over 100 years. The first documented American animation was in 1906 when Vitagraph released Humorous Phases of Funny Faces and has expanded as technology has progressed. Everything from 2-D animation, to modern CGI (Computer-generated imagery) has been represented in American media throughout the years.

The silent age of American animation dates back to approximately 1906 when Vitagraph released Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. Director James Stuart Blackton, widely regarded as the father of American animation, developed stop-motion and cutout animation. From there, animation rapidly became more sophisticated. Although early animations were rudimentary, they rapidly became more sophisticated with such classics as Gertie the Dinosaur in 1914, in which animation pioneer Winsor McCay first employed new techniques such as keyframes, registration marks, the Mutoscope action viewer, and animation loops. While McCay continued to animate by hand, pioneers such as Earl Hurd and Paul Terry developed techniques like cel animation. Other classics of the time included Felix the Cat, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, and Koko the Clown.

Originally a novelty, some early animated silents depicted magic acts or were strongly influenced by the comic strip. Animation also drew significant inspiration from vaudeville, a theatrical genre that developed out of blackface minstrelsy and peaked in popularity in the 1920s. This underlying influence can be seen in several popular early animated works, which feature ethnic and racial caricatures and stereotypes. Early works were eventually distributed along with newsreels. Silent animated films, like their live-action silent cousins, would come with a musical score to be played by an organist or even an orchestra in larger theatres. Silent cartoons became almost entirely obsolete after 1928, when sound synchronized cartoons were introduced with the debut of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie, thus ushering in the golden age of American animation.

The golden age of American animation was a period that began with the popularization of sound synchronized cartoons in 1928. Much of the rapid improvement of animation took place at Walt Disney Studios. Out of this innovation, a tension emerged between the labor of the process and the magic of immersion into the result. Some cartoons emphasized and celebrated the work of animators that went into their creation, while others downplayed it. The golden age of American animation gradually ended in the early 1960s when theatrical animated cartoon film shorts started to lose popularity to the newer medium of television. Animated works from after the golden age, especially on television, were produced on cheaper budgets and with more limited techniques between the late 1950s and the mid-1980s.

World War II changed the possibilities for animation. Prior to the war, animation was mostly seen as a form of family entertainment. The attack on Pearl Harbor was a turning point in its utility. On December 8, 1941, the Disney Studio lot in Burbank was requisitioned as an Army anti-aircraft base, occupying the space for the next eight months. Soon after, Walt Disney Productions was contracted by the United States military to produce propaganda and training films centred on ideological, cultural and instructional messages to both soldiers and the general public.

By 1942, approximately 93% of the studio’s production output was devoted to government-related projects. These government projects included educational training films produced specifically for the United States Army and Navy. These included instructional pieces such as Stop That Tank! a 22-minute edutainment film that uses limited animation to teach Canadian soldiers how to use the Boys Mk.1 anti-tank rifle against Nazi tanks.

Throughout the war, Disney produced over 400,000 feet of educational war films, totalling 68 hours of continuous film, with 204,000 feet produced in 1943 alone. Within these were films intended for the public, built on morale rather than on education. Propaganda films produced during World War II generally served two primary purposes: to depict American soldiers overcoming enemy forces through comedic adventures, and to present critical portrayals of Axis powers, particularly Nazi Germany, and its political system. Commando Duck is an example of the former, featuring Donald Duck as a clumsy, emotional U.S. soldier navigating enemy-held territory in Japan and ultimately defeating the enemy on his own. An example of the latter is Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi, which follows a German boy named Hans as he is raised under the Nazi regime and subjected to ideological indoctrination, culminating in his transformation into a soldier loyal to Adolf Hitler. These films allowed Americans to release their anger and frustration through ridicule and crude humor.

The television era of American animation was a period in the history of American animation that gradually started in the late 1950s with the decline of theatrical animated shorts and popularization of television animation, reached its peak during the 1970s, and ended around the mid-1980s. This era was characterized by low budgets, limited animation, an emphasis on television over the theater, and the general perception of cartoons being primarily for children.