AV is fifteen! Looking back over the years, there were a lot of people, events, and stories that brought us to where we are today. Take a scroll through time with us as we recall some of the milestones and highlights in the website's history and revisit key posts and images from our past.
— Olivier Mouroux starts an animation website called Animated Movies, featuring a daily news feed and a database of past and future films.
the Animated Movies logo
— Ben Simon discovers the website, befriends Olivier, and begins to occasionally send news items his way.
2001
April 16th — James R Whitson volunteers to help Olivier with website hosting.
April 26nd — Ben writes animation reviews and feature articles for another website, where he eventually meets Randall Cyrenne. The oldest of these stories now stored at AV is from this date.
Ben's earliest article archived at AV
October 11th — Olivier tells friends he is planning on leaving Animated Movies after being offered a job in the industry.
October 18th — Ben, James, and several other people brought together by Olivier launch Animated News as a successor to the Animated Movies news site.
the first post made on Animated News
the Animated News logo
March 2nd and 3rd — Animated News hits the road for the first time to cover an event. James heads to Philadelphia for Roy Disney's "Save Disney" meeting as well as Disney's annual shareholder meeting.
event coverage of both meetings
March 14th — Future staff writer Dacey Booker makes his first contribution to the site.
Dacey's first appearance on AN
October 22nd — After using a donated message board ran by a third-party for the first year of our existence, AN builds its own dedicated forum.
February 6th — Animated News holds its first Oscar Event – a prediction contest and a live chat during the show. It's been held every year since. We've given away over $1,000 in cash and discs. Forum member "DarrenBest" is our first winner.
December 5th — Animated Views launches, focusing on reviews, commentary, and opinion. Ben recruits several writers from his other site, including Randall. Animated News continues to operate as a sister site, handling news exclusively.
the Animated Views launch announcement
the original Animated Views logo
January 1st — Animated Views spends the year branching out into new content categories. Ben starts things off with a major scoop – an exclusive tour of the Disney Artistic Sources exhibition in Paris.
Ben's event coverage of the exhibition
January 6th — Animated News makes a major blogging software change without anyone noticing. After using Greymatter since launch, we recreate the site exactly the same in Wordpress. (No one is ready to start another major project after having just launched AV!)
January 7th — Continuing the plan to widen our range, James posts AV's first theatrical review.
August 7th — Jérémie Noyer allows AV to reprint translated articles from his French language interview site, Media Magic. A few months later, he joins the site "full-time".
March 19th — While we had previewed some high-def animation previously, on this date we formally jumped in with reviews – first with an HD-DVD title and, two weeks later, a Blu-ray disc.
July 23rd to 30th — In the site's fifth anniversary year, Ben, Randall, and James meet for the first time at Comic-Con in San Diego and Disneyland in Anaheim.
James and Ben at Disneyland
Randall and Ben at California Adventure
November 2nd — Animated News is merged with Animated Views to form a single consolidated site.
the merged Animated Views announcement
November 6th — A long time member of the forums, Dacey officially joins the AV staff as a news writer.
September — In the only major design change to the site between 2009 and 2018, the Animated Views logo is simplified.
the second Animated Views logo
February 29th — Animated Views introduces a movie release calendar and iPhone app.
the calendar and app announcement
the upcoming animated films calendar
December 31st — We ask fans to tell us their opinion on the year in animated films, with our first Readers' Choice Poll. Wreck-It Ralph is the inaugural pick.
March 4th — We partner with another group of animation fans on the internet, the Rotoscopers, reposting their podcasts for three years.
October 14th to 19th — Animated Views celebrates its tenth anniversary with a week's worth of articles on the history of the site.
July 4th — After almost eleven years of writing blurbs for every news story we post, Animated Views switches to a headlines only format for most stories in order to get news out faster.
the news format change announcement
July 23rd — Future staff writer Dan Short makes his first contribution to the site.
December 7th — Dacey ramps up his workload. After taking over social media administration earlier in the year, he also begins writing reviews for the site.
2015
January 9th — Another long time member of the forums, Dan officially joins the AV staff full-time.
2017
September 1st — Animated Views launches its first revamp of the site in almost a decade.
the third Animated Views logo
October 18th — To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the site, AV posts an archived version of Olivier's animation database as it appeared at Animated Movies in 2003.
