Disney Animation started as a small studio doing a series of Alice shorts that combined live-action and animation and straight animated shorts called Laugh-o-Grams (Finch 27). Disney used new sound technology to produce “Steam Boat Willy,” the first short featuring Mickey Mouse. Additionally, they created a series of animations called “Silly Symphonies” which incorporated new colored film technologies (Finch 38,52,58).

It was Disney’s studio that first implemented storyboards in their preproduction process, which set Disney narratives above the rest in their ability to visually represent a story (Finch 64). As Disney’s studio grew in terms of staff, finance, and prestige, its animation became more complex and refined. However, the actual process of animating was the same as it had been when Walt Disney started years earlier. The idea of how animation should be viewed and plotted was changing as Disney’s studio sought to tell better stories. Eventually, the studio put together its first full-length animation Snow White, 1937.

Non-digital technology

Disney’s next feature film, Pinocchio, showed that the Disney animation team could achieve technical brilliance. This was achieved by producing with animation, the kind of camera shots that would not be common in live-action movies until the invention of power-operated zoom lenses (Finch 153). Live-action footage was shot for the film to assist animators in achieving believable animation (Finch 159). Multiplane cameras allowed camera technicians to place the animation cels and background on pieces of glass. These pieces were placed at different lengths from the camera, creating a more realistic feeling of depth. These shots were expensive and therefore used sparingly, but they demonstrated the Disney goal to create believable animation.

Xerox enters

Lady and the Tramp,1955, was the first film to be shot in Cinescope, today’s wide screen, while One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 1961, was the first Disney film to use technology to transfer animators’ sketches to cels (Finch 234,274). “Ub Iwerks…had modified a Xerox camera to transfer animators’ drawings directly to cels, thus eliminating the inking process and preserving much of the spontaneity of the pencil line. This saved time and money and had a major effect on the way Disney animation would look for the next thirty years”(246). The Xerox camera also allowed the animators to animate one small group of puppies and duplicate them repeatedly to get the eventual ninety-nine puppies.

CGI

Twenty-five years later, computer generated imagery was introduced into Disney animation in the low budget film The Great Mouse Detective, 1986. Computer generated gears were added to the films climax inside London’s Big Ben Clock Tower. Well-integrated into the film's animation, few realized the huge leap Disney Animation had taken. Oliver & Company, 1988, also used computer generated imagery (CGI) for backgrounds, but overuse caused it to be a bit intrusive (Finch 274).

CAPS

Disney Animation’s next major advance was taken on another small film. The Rescuers Down Under, 1990, was the first Disney film to use CAPS—a computerized production system that allowed hand-made animation drawings to be copied and colored electronically, thus eliminating the need for cels. This, like the Xerox camera, changed Disney animation forever. The Little Mermaid, 1989, was the last movie “that depended upon hand painted cels (as modified by the xerography that had been standard for almost three decades)”(Finch 292).

With the introduction of CAPS, Disney also streamlined their production method, making more effective use of their top animators. These animators were now considered key character animators and only had to produce rough drawings that clean-up artists would turn into CAPS-ready finished drawings (Finch 298). CGI and CAPS played a large part in Disney’s next hit, Beauty and the Beast, 1991. The ballroom that Belle and Beast danced in was computer generated and allows for complex moving camera shots that would have been very difficult, if at all possible, with hand-drawn backgrounds. CAPS allowed for complex camera setups that otherwise would be too expensive and complicated to achieve with traditional methods (Finch 309).

CGI character animation

Aladdin, 1992, used computer generated imagery for its character, Carpet, and some of its backgrounds. Carpet was the first non-background CGI to be used in a Disney film. The next non-background CGI to be used made possible the wildebeest stampede in The Lion King, 1994 (Finch 223). CGI has been used (like Xerox technology before it) to make possible large crowd scenes such as the festival scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1996, and thescene involving the attack of the Mongols in Mulan, 1998.

CGI abuse

The recent flops of Atlantis, 2001, and Treasure Planet, 2002, look back to Oliver & Company and question if Disney animators are showing off their CGI a little too much. I would ask if it is a lack of story development and a movement away from the musical theatrical approach that made Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid hits. I think it is a combination of these. Lilo and Stich, 2002, Brother Bear, 2003, and the upcoming Home on the Range, show a movement back toward more “cartoonish” and integrated CGI, with the first two having little song incorporated into them.

Ub Iwerks created Mickey Mouse

multiplane camera

the white eared puppies in the back are Xerox copies

gear scene from The Great Mouse Detective

CAPS Color Model from Aladdin, 1992

Carpet was the first character CGI

Scott Johnston working on the wildebeest stampede in The Lion King

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