Tuesday, May 2, 2017

The Shock of the New





When I first heard that Walt Disney didn't like the look of 101 Dalmatians at all, I couldn't believe it.
What a great film, and watching the animation in rough form added even more life to the characters than ever before. The animators were sure happy, because audiences for the first time were able to see on the screen what came directly from their animation desk. Loose, dynamic drawings that weren't re-interpreted by inkers with super clean ink lines on the cels.
I remember Milt Kahl remarking that all the way back to Peter Pan that he told Walt about the idea to find a way to reproduce the rough animation as final footage. But Walt's response to Milt was was:"Ah, you want that fine line around those characters." Walt didn't want to remind the audience that they were looking at drawings.
But Sleeping Beauty turned out to be the last inked animated feature at Disney. Economics forced future productions toward a simplified production pipeline, and that meant photocopying the drawings on cels. Black lines and all.

As for myself, I love the inked classic films, but I really am crazy about xerox. That's why my film Mushka won't include any clean up animation, I wanted to keep the drawings loose, because I like the vibrancy that comes with rough animation.




For more on xeroxed cels go here:

http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/05/xerox.html


13 comments:

  1. That cel painting of Aurora is absolutely gorgeous.

    But sadly, that WAS the end of an era, that kind of animation that we'll never see again. Even though that CAPS system helped make drawings look clean on the screen, the coloured ink lines won't be there as they were from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty.

    Andreas Deja, have you seen the new anime film Your Name? I've already seen it five times, and it still captures me

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    1. Hey, leave him alone! He doesn't even care about anime at all.

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    2. That's not true. I love some of the stories in Japanese animation. Haven't seen Your Name yet, but I will.

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  2. Andreas, why Sleeping Beauty wasn't the best movie back then ... what happen after the release I know people didn't like it in 1959, It take it 6 years to make it this movie.

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    1. I know you know the history of Disney films.

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    2. Audiences didn't connect with the film's story.

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    3. That's to bad for them, but now "Sleeping Beauty" is a masterpiece.

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  3. There's a lot of stuff that I didn't realise used xerox cels, with clean drawings. I love the xerox look, although it's definitely way better now that you can keep a lot of the softness of the lines, and colour them digitally.
    Hope your film is still going well, Andreas!

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  4. I think Sleeping Beauty is kind of like The Lord of the Rings style.

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  5. Agree to disagree; I much prefer the classic approach over xerox. But I love both, so preference doesn't mean much from me! ;) I'm super excited.

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  6. I suppose one way to view it's use in 101 Dalmatians is to think of it as the viewer peering into an artist's sketchbook and it's the drawings come to life as the story plays out.

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  7. Hello, Mr. Andreas Deja, I'm an aspiring animator, I love and admire your works very much.
    I do not know if I'm right, but maybe you want to see my animations and what I can offer as a manpower, I really want to help in 2D animation projects that I love so much, I'm ready to help in what is necessary in the animation.
    Thank you very much for your attention, thank you from the heart.

    Yago Rocha dos Santos
    São Paulo - SP - Brazil

    yago.the.equidna@hotmail.com

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  8. The Shock of the New is a 1980 documentary television series written and presented by Robert Hughes produced by the BBC in association with Time-Life Films,


    สูตรบาคาร่า

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