It's too early to tell if this style will become as dominant as "cartoon" CGI has (pretty much replacing the hand-drawn animation that Disney, Warner Bros and others used so well). But the history of animation has always been one of variety, creativity and change.

What constitutes an animated film is debatable. A succession of sequential projected, unreal images might be a crude definition. The first animated movies might be the Pantomimes Lumineuses used in Emile Reynaud's Theatre Optique. The device was patented in 1888 and the animation - painted on to gelatin plates framed in horizontal strips rather than photographed - was first exhibited in 1892.

Early animated films shot on celluloid include J. Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906), featuring pictures of faces on a blackboard that were changed between frames as well as cut-out stop-motion animation.

A version of the latter technique was used in The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), the oldest known surviving animated feature film. Stop motion was developed over many years and animators like Willis O'Brien (King Kong, 1933) and Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts, 1963) raised this painstaking model-moving method to an art form, still in existence (the Aardman Studios films are one example). Norman McLaren even applied the technique to humans in his 1952 Oscar-winning short Neighbors.

Disney would become the leader in cel-animated feature films, starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

Although earlier versions of the multiplane camera, giving animation a sense of depth, had been invented, Disney's device, allowing more elaborate camera moves and special effects, was more advanced.

Rotoscoping (tracing over live-action footage) was patented by Max Fleischer who used it in such films as Gulliver's Travels (1939). Ralph Bakshi (The Lord of the Rings, 1978) and Richard Linklater (Waking Life, 2001) are two prominent latterday filmmakers who have done this.

In recent years, more realistic motion and facial capture using CGI has been used ( the recent Planet of the Apes films).

Another method of combining live action and animation - putting actors alongside cartoon characters or in animated settings - has a long history. Winsor McKay did it in Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).and this was developed by others including the Disney studios (Mary Poppins, 1964). It was particularly impressive in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Nowadays, like rotoscoping, it's done using CGI.

Speaking of CGI, it's been the most popular method to create traditional animated films in recent years, including the Pixar Toy Story series. It's cheaper and quicker than the labour-intensive hand-drawn method though there are hybrids - eg characters being cel-animated, backgrounds being CGI. And many CGI films are in 3D.

Whatever the method, in mainstream animation what matters most is having a good story.