When Pixar made the computerized, $30 million-budget "Toy Story" nine years ago, it was seen as a risk. Would audiences raised on more than 50 years of traditional hand-drawn animation accept pixels and computer code?

The $30 million question got a $192 million answer from the domestic box office. It was answered again in 1998 with $162 million for "A Bug's Life," with $245 million for "Toy Story 2" (1999), $255 million for "Monsters, Inc." (2001) and $339 million for "Finding Nemo" (2003).

And those are just the Pixar movies. Imitators have come along and reaped just as much cash with computer-animated films. DreamWorks' "Shrek" films have reaped more than $700 million combined, and "Ice Age" (2002), a film by Fox Animation Studios and Blue Sky Studios, raked in $176 million.

This is more than just a numbers game, though; it's a universal shift in tastes. Not only has Pixar invented a new film medium, it's killed an old one. Disney, which served as Pixar's parent company and innovated feature film animation with movies such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) and "Fantasia" (1940), announced it will no longer make traditionally animated films. This year's "Home on the Range," which made back less than half of its $110 million budget, marked the end of the traditional animation era.

The Japanese continue to operate with pens and paintbrushes, with releases such as this year's "Ghost in the Shell: Innocence" and "Howl's Moving Castle," which doesn't yet have a U.S. release date, but even many Japanese animes are touched up by computers.

This year marks a high of computer-animated films, the biggest of which may be "The Incredibles," which opens Friday. It will be tough for the film, about an exiled family of superheroes, to match the $436 million hauled in by "Shrek 2" over the summer months. The real battle will be fought at the Academy Awards, where the two films will almost surely duke it out for the distinction of best animated film.

"Shark Tale," which is currently the reigning animated film still in theaters, shook off bad reviews to hold the top spot in the box office charts for three consecutive weeks.

The dark horse is "The Polar Express," a $165 million-budget fantasy adaptation of a children's book. The Warner Bros. film stars Tom Hanks in several roles, and was filmed with motion capture, in which actors are filmed wearing sensors that give animators outlines to fill out with computer artwork.

Other animated films hoping to jump into the Oscar fray are "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie," which opens Nov. 19, the lone traditionally animated film left to come, and the puppetry-laden "Team America: World Police," which should qualify in the category.

In your Oscar pool, don't bet on a film that isn't operating on ones and zeroes.