The documentary film Ryan follows the life of a gifted animator from the sixties and seventies named Ryan Larkin.  While it focuses on his life as well as his work, I found his short film Walking the most interesting piece of the larger film.  Made in 1968, Walking in an animation all about how people walk.  It is more a study of movement and gait than a short film, but none the less it is incredible.  The way that Larkin captured the personality of his characters without even giving them facial features is amazing.  Simply by putting a little bounce in their step or a slight head bob, their intentions and thoughts become almost clear.  It is one of the most interesting shorts I have watched in a while. 

Tron came out in 1982 and was one of the first films by a major studio to rely so heavily on computer graphics.  The premise of the movie is rather simple, a computer is trying to take over and the user who gets sucked into has to beat it at its own game.  However, the games that they play are completely animated by computers.  At the time it was made the technology for combining live action into an animated environment did not exist, so there were no live people in the animated parts.  They used traditional techniques for those parts and a style called backlit animation.  Backlit animation involves placing the characters in front of a black set and filming them in black and white.  Then each frame is colored to look how they want it to look.  This was the only feature film to use this trick because it turned out to be way too much money.