Futurama is an American animated science fiction comedy series created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late. Magoo and Dick Tracy television series and other series and specials, including the popular Mister Magoos Christmas Carol. UPA also produced two animated features, 1. Arabian Nights and Gay Purr ee,1 and distributed Japanese films from Toho Studios in the 1. Gerald Mc. Boing Boing 2. UPAs memorable character and licensed and co produced by Cookie Jar Entertainment and Classic Media, for Cartoon Network. UPA Pictures legacy in the history of animation has largely been overshadowed by the commercial success and availability of the cartoon libraries of Warner Bros., MGM and Disney. Nonetheless, UPA had a significant impact on animation style, content, and technique, and its innovations were recognized and adopted by the other major animation studios and independent filmmakers all over the world. UPA pioneered the technique of limited animation. Although this style of animation came to be widely used in the 1. Disney of recreating cinematic realism in animated films. HistoryeditOriginseditUPA was founded in the wake of the Disney animators strike of 1. Walt Disney staff members. Among them was John Hubley, a layout artist who was unhappy with the ultra realistic style of animation that Disney had been advocating. Along with a number of his colleagues, Hubley believed that animation did not have to be a painstakingly realistic imitation of real life they felt that the medium of animation had been constrained by efforts to depict cinematic reality. Chuck Jones 1. 94. The Dover Boys had demonstrated that animation could freely experiment with character design, depth, and perspective to create a stylized artistic vision appropriate to the subject matter. Hubley, Bobe Cannon, and others at UPA, sought to produce animated films with sufficient freedom to express design ideas considered radical by other established studios. UPA produced Private Snafu short film A Few Quick Facts About Fear from 1. In 1. 94. 3, Zack Schwartz, David Hilberman, and Stephen Bosustow formed a studio called first Industrial Film and Poster Service later known as United Productions of America, where they were free to apply their new techniques in film animation. Finding work and income in the then booming field of wartime work for the government, the small studio produced a cartoon sponsored by the United Auto Workers UAW in 1. Hell Bent for Election was directed by Chuck Jones and was produced for the reelection campaign of FDR. The film was a success, and it led to another assignment from the UAW, Brotherhood of Man 1. Watch New Blood: The Last Vampire Online. The film, directed by Bobe Cannon, advocated tolerance of all people. The short was groundbreaking not only in its message but in its very flat, stylized design, in complete defiance of the Disney approach. Cult Comedy Cartoons The Grinch CostumeWith its new found fame, the studio renamed itself UPA Pictures UPA. Initially, UPA contracted with the United States government to produce its animation output, but the government contracts began to evaporate as the FBI began investigating Communist activities in Hollywood in the late 1. No formal charges were filed against anyone at UPA in the beginnings of the so called Red Scare, but the government contracts were lost as Washington severed its ties with Hollywood. Columbia Pictures and successeditUPA entered the crowded field of theatrical cartoons to sustain itself and won a contract with Columbia Pictures. Columbia had historically been an also ran in the field of animated shorts, and it was not satisfied with the output of its Screen Gems cartoon studio. The UPA animators applied their stylistic concepts and storytelling to Columbias characters The Fox and the Crow with the shorts Robin Hoodlum 1. Cult Comedy Cartoons The Grinch JimThe Magic Fluke 1. Hubley. Both were nominated for Academy Awards, and Columbia granted the studio permission to create its own new characters. UPA responded, not with another funny animal, but a star that was a human character, a crotchety, nearsighted old man. The Ragtime Bear 1. Mr. Magoo, was a box office hit, and UPAs star quickly rose as the 1. With a unique, sparse drawing style that contrasted greatly with other cartoons of the day, not to mention the novelty of a human character in a field crowded with talking cats, mice, and rabbits, the Mr. Magoo series won accolades for UPA. Two Magoo cartoons won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject Cartoons When Magoo Flew 1. Magoos Puddle Jumper 1. UPA scored another hit with Gerald Mc. Boing Boing 1. 95. Dr. Seuss. Gerald Mc. Boing Boing won UPA the Academy Award in 1. UPA cartoons would receive a total of fifteen Oscar nominations between 1. In December 1. 95. UPA announced plans for a feature length film based on the work of cartoonist and humorist James Thurber. The film was to combine live action and animation and was tentatively titled Men, Women and Dogs, but it was never completed. Just one of the Thurber pieces intended for this feature, The Unicorn in the Garden, was eventually released as a short subject. Shorts such as The Tell Tale Heart and Rooty Toot Toot featured striking, sophisticated designs unlike anything offered by competing studios. The UPA style began to influence significant changes at the other major animation studios, including Warner Bros., MGM, Famous Studios, and even Disney, ushering in a new era of experimentation in animation. Turning to televisioneditIn 1. Steve Bosustow secured a CBS contract for UPA to produce a television series The Boing Boing Show aka The Gerald Mc. Boing Boing Show,5 which premiered in December 1. Supervised by Bobe Cannon, this production offered an array of styles and brought then new talent to the studio, such as Ernest Pintoff, Fred Crippen, Jimmy Murakami, Richard Williams, George Dunning, Mel Leven, Aurelius Battaglia, John Whitney, and many more. However, audiences did not embrace UPAs experiment in television entertainment as a result, the show vanished from the airwaves in 1. Further, as the major Hollywood studios began cutting back and shutting down their short film divisions in the late 1. UPA was in financial straits, and Steve Bosustow sold the studio to a producer named Henry G. Saperstein. Saperstein turned UPAs focus to television to sustain the studio. UPA adapted Mr. Magoo for television and produced another series based on the comic strip. Dick Tracy. UPA was forced to churn out cartoons at a far greater quantity than the studio had done for theatrical releases or even the CBS television series. Despite this however, quality was languishing, and UPAs reputation as an artistic innovator faded. UPAs style of limited animation was adopted by other animation studios, especially by television cartoon studios such as Hanna Barbera Productions. However, this procedure was generally implemented as a cost cutting measure rather than an artistic choice that UPA originally intended. A plethora of low budget, cheaply made cartoons over the next twenty years effectively reduced television animation to a commodity, partly popularizing the notion of animation as being made only for children rather than a medium for any age group to enjoy with the exception of shows like The Flintstones, and notoriously going against UPAs original goal to expand the boundaries of animation and create a new style for the medium. One bright moment in the UPA television era came with Mister Magoos Christmas Carol 1. Magoos next television endeavor, the 1. The Famous Adventures of Mr. Magoo. Christmas Carol captures the spirit of Charles Dickenss 1.