Digital Media Concepts/Evolution Of Disney Animation

Walt Disney Animation Studio, also known as Disney Animations, is an American studio creating animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California. Established in 1923 as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, it gained recognition with the short film Steamboat Willie (1928), the first post-produced sound cartoon using synchronized sound. It is currently the longest-running animation studio in the world and is known for its 62 featured films and hundreds of short films. From their first featured film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Wish (2023), Disney Animations has gone through several different styles of animating throughout the years, shown in some films, to get to where they are right now.

Technicolor

In 1929, while Walt Disney started his journey with his new character, Mickey Mouse, Disney also started a new animated series called Silly Symphonies (1929). Silly Symphonies is a series from 1929 through 1939 of 75 musical short films introducing new characters and sequences released between Mickey shorts. The short films started in black and white until 1932 when Disney released a short film in the series called Flowers and Trees. Dr. Herbert Kalmus showed Disney tests for a new three-strip Technicolor process to replace the old two-tone one. Disney signed an exclusive rights contract with Technicolor until the end of 1935. Flowers and Trees was the first-ever 3-strip technicolor short they released. After that short film, Disney started to use technicolor for the rest of his future films beginning in 1935 which became a phenomenal success. The new technicolor version of the series has grown as much popularity and success that matched (and passed later on) the same as the Mickey Mouse cartoons. The contract between Disney and Technicolor was also extended for another 5 years later.

Rotoscoping & Multiplane Camera

Live action reference and animated film side by side

Starting his first feature-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1934, Walt Disney knew that he would have to upgrade his technology for the artists to make the film happen. Even though the animators during the time loved doing hand-drawn scenes and characters from their minds and using mirrors for facial reference, Disney thought he would bring in the technology of rotoscoping, invented by Max Fleischer. Rotoscoping is a technique that involves drawing or tracing over live-action frames to enhance realism in animation or film. Disney utilized reference models like Marge Champion for Snow White, filmed their movements, and incorporated them to enhance the fluidity of animation. Additionally, they introduced the first multiplane camera for depth in the film. There was a challenge with this being the first full-length film to ever be released by Disney, and it was that it needed to hold the audience's attention longer than the length of a short film. Disney took the risk to bring in the technique of a multiplane camera, which helped the artists add a more realistic form, substance, and movement to each scene. The multiplane camera revolutionized animated film production, remaining a staple in the animation industry for many years.

3D Models & Water Effects

With Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs being a successful hit with both the release and its animation, Disney wanted to push the boundaries with their next new film, Pinocchio (1940), to see what more they could do. Instead of just using 2D references to follow, they constructed 3D models to help with animating. The modeling department constructed accurate-sized miniatures of Stromboli's carriage, the Pleasure Island stagecoach, and, most impressively, working models of all Geppetto's workshop wall cuckoo clocks so animators could see how they appeared in motion. The studio's Character Model shop grew when Disney loved the method of using 3D models. In the early 1940s, they hired more sculptors to work on models for their movies like Bambi (1942), Fantasia (1940), and others. One unique thing about Pinocchio’s film animation is the water effects. Disney’s effects animator, Sandy Strother, worked on water effects for a full year. The way the water was animated for each scene was different every time, from being as realistic as it could be to also being just flat and geometric. The making of Pinocchio was a measured risk that made Disney Feature Animation a major artistic and business force together.

Backgrounds & Widescreen

Sleeping Beauty (1959) is one of the most artistically distinct animated feature films to date due to its beautiful and incredible backgrounds by lead illustrator, Eyvind Earle. It was the first animated film to use backdrop paintings to control its visual aesthetic, a strategy that many of the film's participants found objectionable. In contrast to earlier Disney movies, Sleeping Beauty has a lot of fine details, and every scene plays out like the ornate tableaus it was inspired by. Numerous illustrators have drawn inspiration from the movie, influencing the color scheme and background of movies like Frozen (2013) and Pocahontas (1995), among others. During his five years on the film, Earle produced hundreds of sketches and more than 300 visual-development paintings, along with dozens of backdrop paintings, some of which were as long as 15 feet. However, animators found it difficult to distinguish the characters from the extremely stylized background. Disney's choice to use Super Technirama 70, a new 70 mm exhibition format, caused another difficulty for the movie, as illustrators had to use enormous sheets of paper and produce twice as much art. This further postponed the film's release; originally scheduled for 1955, it was eventually released in 1959 due to other various projects in the works.

Xerography

Finished painted cel of protagonist, Pongo from One Hundred and One Dalmatians

Disney fell in love with the story of Dodie Smith’s The Hundred and One Dalmatians and wanted to make it a Disney animated film. One problem with making the film was how to make 99 puppies with spots. Because Sleeping Beauty had taken so much time and money with its production, Disney decided to make changes in the animation studio, transitioning from hand-drawn animations to xerography. Xerography is a technique that allows artwork to be printed directly onto animation cels. It eliminated the necessity for Disney to ink every animation cel manually and allowed them to photocopy the 99 little Dalmatian pups rather than hand-drawing them. Xerography compelled animators to abandon the more realistic animation of the dogs, as seen in Lady and the Tramp (1955), in favor of a more cartoon-ish style for One Hundred and One Dalmatians and, almost all animated animals in Disney movies up until Beauty and the Beast (1991). Disney disliked it because he thought it returned to earlier, less sophisticated animation methods. Despite being less creative, xerography was also far less expensive, which allowed Disney to save millions on production expenses. Due to its success, Disney almost stopped utilizing hand-inked cels for their movies, switching to xerography for nearly all of them until The Little Mermaid (1989).

Live-Action Animation

The Alice Comedies (1923), one of Disney's earliest projects, combined live-action and animated movie scenes. Over their first few decades, the studio had done this multiple times, including films Mary Poppins (1964) and Pete’s Dragon (1977). However, they didn't truly take it to the next level until Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). With other live-action combination films they’ve done, Disney has always had the issue of characters looking like they were pasted onto the screen, rather than being along with the others. This movie changed that by utilizing new technology that made it possible to print drawings directly onto a frame of film and traditional pencil-drawn animation that created the illusion of depth, calling them “2.5-dimensional”. The cartoons not only realistically shared the screen with actual people, but they also interacted with the real world. Life-size rubber puppets were utilized as props by cinematographer, Dean Cudney so that performers would have a point of reference to know where to gaze. He would then give his camera operators instructions to move as if they were responding to an actual event taking place in front of them; he would purposefully position chairs and other obstructions in their path. Because of the film, complex, realistic-looking animation gained a lot of popularity.

CGI

The Great Mouse Detective (1986)

A significant first for Disney animation, The Great Mouse Detective made use of computer-generated imagery (CGI). Disney's first use of CGI was in their other film, The Black Cauldron (1985), but wasn't as successful of use as The Great Mouse Detective. The film culminates with a thrilling pursuit through Big Ben to save Olivia, the tritagonist. The details behind the sequence add to its impressiveness and intrigue. The scene combines hand-drawn characters with computer-generated backgrounds. The sequence in The Great Mouse Detective was a significant turning point in the history of animation, particularly in light of the advances that Disney and Pixar would soon make with the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS). Even though it’s not much, it was a crucial step for the future of animation.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Disney began experimenting with the technology that their sister company, Pixar, was developing in the 1990s. Pixar created the computer animation production system (CAPS) which enables artists to put together the computer-animated elements, background, animation, and special effects on the finished film. The film they were working on during the time, Beauty and the Beast, has a scene where they experiment more with their digital techniques, the ballroom scene. Combining hand-drawn traditional character animation with CGI and combining it with CAPS would allow for sweeping camera movements as the dance goes on. Jim Hillin, the CG supervisor, was in charge of the ballroom sequence's CG work. Despite appearing on screen for less than a minute and a half, the ballroom has such a lasting impression on viewers that it becomes a touchstone image in the movie's marketing.

Hercules (1997)

The Disney Renaissance was the time when Disney experimented with new CGI techniques the most, including some visibly seen in their film, Hercules. Although Hades' body was drawn by hand, effects animators worked on the hair's animation, getting feedback from animator, Nik Ranieri on how it should move. To give the Hydra its necessary fangs and snake-like necks, illustrator, Gerald Scarfe created preliminary drawings for the Hydra. Roger Gould then oversaw the computer animation team. A clay model of the Hydra was created, and its dimensions were entered into computers as a wire-frame model so that the monster could be animated. Early in the filming process, the filmmakers decided that the Hydra would eventually have thirty heads. The animators then created a single master head, which the computer could then multiply to the appropriate size. The four-minute battle sequence was the result of nearly a year and a half of work by 13 animators and technical directors. Additionally, the directors' vision of Olympus as a cloud-based city led them to combine withdrawn effects animation with painted backgrounds of clouds and cloud-like imagery to create a morphing technique that was used for Zeus's recliner and baby Hercules's cradle.

Chicken Little (2005)

Chicken Little was a turning point for Disney, their first full CGI film ever made, but the transition for Disney wasn’t easy. The infrastructure needed to be updated, and a digital pipeline needed to be established for Chicken Little and beyond. The transition was led by Steve Goldberg, one of Disney's top CG specialists and visual effects supervisors. Aesthetic objectives, settings, effects, and data movements were all present. Chicken Little's supervisor, Jason Ryan, and his team have introduced all of the fantastic tools and techniques that create fluid motion, such as squatch-and-stretch and smear frames, into the world of computer graphics. It was now possible to do things that were impossible with 2D, such as highly detailed lighting, fabric, and coloring, and to give these characters a sense of depth. Textures were another big challenge for look development. The software development team wrote a system for the placement of hair, cloth, feathers, and leaves called XGen. This allowed shortcuts by using cards and then painting on top of that with a new program called Paint 3D. This movie marked the beginning of a new era for Walt Disney Animation and opened the door for popular films like Zootopia (2016) and Frozen (2013).

Tangled (2010)

Originally, Rapunzel Unbraided (Tangled) was supposed to be a 2D animated film, but it was green-lit with the one condition of it being a CGI film. A big challenge filmmakers had with the movie was Rapunzel’s hair. When objects collide, computers have problems. Rapunzel's 70-foot hair is composed of over 100,000 objects (i.e. strands) that collide, sweep over her shoulders, slide across the ground, and crash into other characters during both defensive and protective moments. Executive producer and animator supervisor, Glen Keane produced the "hair bible," a collection of illustrations that aided filmmakers in animating the hair. Additionally, he provided stylistic direction to the filmmakers, helping them create hair that was wavy and lush. They used dynamicWires, their proprietary hair simulation software, which makes use of a mass-spring system to simulate curve dynamics. Because of the simulation features, they were able to replicate Rapunzel's hair's extreme length. They were able to simulate a small portion of her entire hair per shot thanks to simulation freezing and collision support structures, which greatly reduced the strain of this intricate hair. They were also able to control the hair's motion to allow it to move naturally while still adhering to the film's art direction thanks to effortless dragging and hair-hair constraints.

Back to Hand-Drawn

Walt Disney Animation Studios returns to hand-drawn animation with The Princess And The Frog (2009). John Lasseter, the executive producer, discovered that utilizing the richness of Walt Disney Animation Studios' history is essential to guiding the company into the future. Its well-liked narrative styles, its prosperous characters, and its lavish musical arrangements, their new hand-drawn project required all of it. When the filmmakers realized that the hand-drawn medium was still as colorful and captivating as ever, they set out to recreate and reinvent the art form with respect, intention, and a fresh perspective. The filmmakers found that their favorite animators who were succeeding in digital animation were eager to go back to hand-drawn animation. A new generation of artists also emerged, excited to participate in the production because they had grown up watching the classic Disney movies as well as the movies directed by John Musker, Ron Clements, and their colleagues. Unfortunately, the film wasn’t as successful as Disney wanted it to be and since CGI was less expensive and time-consuming to create, Disney decided to switch back to CGI, making The Princess And The Frog their last major hand-drawn animation.