How did old animated movies (Sleeping Beauty, Dumbo etc) get made without computers?

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So my basic understanding is they were hand drawn, but how does this even work? Did they hand draw every frame brand new each time? Did they erase then redraw the characters that moved and keep the background the same? But wouldnt that mess up the background if they erased even some tiny parts??

SO MANY QUESTIONS

In: Technology

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

As far as the animating, there is usually a Character designer who, you guessed it, designs the character. He will draw the character in the main/important positions. For instance, 10 or 20 positions to a scene.

Then you will have “In-betweeners” who draw the steps in between. Then you have “Inkers” who add the color, and so on down the line. The staff to create those films were huge.

PLUS, the average rate for film is 24 frames per second so that tells you how many “cels” you need. Animation, the old fashioned way, takes a long time and a lot of work. You had to set all the backgrounds, then add the characters, any foreground, then “Click” take the shot. THEN, move everything the one eighth of an inch, change the cels to move the character, “click”. Do that 24 times for every second of the movie. How long is Sleeping Beauty? Fantasia? Yes… a LOT of work.

(this is an ultra simplified version of course. You should see the shoot sheets that tell you which cels you need for every second of the movie!)

Anonymous 0 Comments

>So my basic understanding is they were hand drawn,

Exactly.

> but how does this even work? Did they hand draw every frame brand new each time

Yep.

>Did they erase then redraw the characters that moved and keep the background the same?

Ok, so, my understanding is that it was like this:

Everything was drawn on clear sheets of plastic. A background was drawn, then a new sheet was laid over top of it, and characters were drawn in on the new sheet, then another sheet was added for any foreground elements that covered up part of the characters. When all of this was completed, and everything was stacked and drawn, what you have is called an animation cel (short for “celluloid,” the type of plastic originally used).

A still photograph of the cel was then taken on a strip of moving picture film, and this became one frame.

For the next frame, everything was removed down to the background, and the process started over.

Anything that didn’t move between frames was copied by putting the sheet of plastic for the new frame on top of the previous one and tracing those elements, then drawing in any new positions–including facial expressions, mouth movements, etc. Obviously, the old layer wasn’t part of the new cel.

This process was repeated for each and every frame of the film. Each second of film requires a minimum of 24 frames, so for a 2 hour film, you’re looking at a *bare minimum* of 172,800 hand-drawn cels.

Animation firms like Disney would have hundreds of animators on staff. Each and every one of them had to be able to draw the characters exactly the same as everybody else, which is why most cartoon characters are were drawn as simply as possible.

This is also why they would use shortcuts like drawing the entire background for a scene once, and drawing anything that changed on new plastic sheets laid over it, and tracing the elements that didn’t move from one frame to the next.

It’s a laborious process, sometimes taking years to complete from drawing the first cel to the last–but it gives the animators complete and total control over everything that happens in each and every frame of film. It also gives the finished product a distinct appearance that CGI is, to my knowledge, currently unable to reproduce.

Interestingly, things were still done this way as recently as *Lilo and Stitch,* released in 2002 (the last hand-drawn Disney film I can think of OTTOMH).

Anonymous 0 Comments

Frame by frame. I mean even now I’d you look at like Justin Roiland complain on Twitter it’s about how long it takes to animate a series.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Oy, what a question to make me feel like a dinosaur. A thing called a “cel” would be used in hand drawn animation sometimes. The background would be drawn one time, and then the characters or any moving part would be drawn onto a clear celluloid sheet (a “cel”) which could then be laid over the finished background and replaced as necessary without changing the background. In old cartoons you can sometimes tell what objects are on a cel and which are background drawings if you have a keen eye. Cels will be more vibrant in color, while the backgrounds color may be more heavily shaded, or “simpler”.

Anonymous 0 Comments

They made backgrounds and overlaid sheets with the characters. This ya certain character frames and backgrounds can be reused. And a shit ton of work and workers.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Cels have already been mentioned, but there are a few things they could do to help get cool effects without breaking the bank.

One of Disney’s big inventions that made their animated movies so ground breaking was the multiplane camera. It was very large cabinet like thing with the camera at the top pointing down. There were several horizontal racks stacked underneath the camera on which they could lay an image painted on glass or plastic. Each of those racks could be moved independently up or down and side to side to position all the layers correctly for a particular frame. This let them get dramatic perspective effects as the camera would pan or zoom through a scene. If they needed an animated figure (say Mickey Mouse walking through a forest), they’d place the correct painted cell of Mickey at that point in the film on the correct rack of the multiplane camera. That way Mickey would walk and would be walking behind some trees but in front of others. Here’s a video talking about the camera: [https://youtu.be/YdHTlUGN1zw](https://youtu.be/YdHTlUGN1zw)

Another thing that could save animators time is that cels can often be reused. Something like walking is often a loop: right foot… left foot… right foot. Cels would be drawn for all the frames of the loop… but you wouldn’t necessarily have to draw cels for the next loop and could just reuse cels from the first. Likewise, for someone talking, you might make a cel of the face but not put a mouth on it. The mouth would be on another cel, and you’d have a few cels painted for the mouth in different talking positions.

Ultimately though, it is a very time consuming process and quite expensive. That’s why it’s rarely done anymore and most people just use computer animation.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Another fun thing to look up is the “multiplane camera” something Disney came up with to help give animation depth of field.