A cartoon is a kind of animation made out of a succession of hand-made drawings projected in a very high speed, which creates an illusion of movement. The most common technique consists in drawing a set painted on paper, onto which we superimpose some characters or other drawn moving elements on tracing papers called celluloids.

Animation standards are of 30 images per second. However, to gain time, it is frequent that only a half of the drawings are made to do 12 images per second, instead of 24 when talking of cinema. Computing has little by little shook up the traditional techniques.

The first animated cartoon, at that time called “luminous pantomimes”, dates from 1892. It was drawn by Emile Reynaud and was projected at the Grevin Museum, France. Later on, Emile Courtet made the first animated cartoon on a film stock. The first cartoons were silent and in black and white like Felix the cat.

Today, animated cartoons are mostly produced for kids. Walt Disney's animated cartoons have become a great success since 1928 while featuring Mickey Mouse. Since sound has become possible, music was often post-synchronized with the image and is still very commonly used. Indeed, most animated cartoons contain a great deal of music, often meaningful in the action since the lyrics almost always tell the story. Some great cartoon soundtracks are very famous, like the one of Aladdin whose song This Blue Dream intended for Princess Jasmine is still very popular as a slow dance in middle schools parties!