Published between 1982 and 1995
An important aid in perfecting the technique was the storyboard. When devised in the early Thirties it was simply a series of drawings arranged in sequence on a board, illustrating film scenes as the camera might see them. If changes needed to be made, whole sections were unpinned and new ones inserted. Widely used in … Read more
Used on the water rippling effects in the wishing well sequence of the film, the Multiplane camera required three technicians to operate it. The reason being that it stretched to the top of a high ceilinged room in the camera department with the camera mounted facing down through a stack of glass frames. Each of … Read more
Brian Sibley tells the story behind the making of Walt Disney’s first animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, fifty years ago this year (1987). The trouble with Walt Disney was he was never satisfied: no sooner had he achieved one thing than he was striving to achieve something else. “By nature,” he once … Read more
Much of this remarkable atmosphere was generated by Disney himself and his visionary approach to animation. Everyone, as animator Ken Anderson has recalled, was carried along by Walt’s personal enthusiasm for the Snow White project: “We had no concept that we were ever going to do anything else or ever want to do anything else”. … Read more
Finding appropriate voices for the characters was also far from easy, since the studio had only limited experience in this field, most of the shorts having featured song and pantomime rather than extensive dialogue. Disney instinctively turned to film, radio and burlesque comics for the dwarfs, casting Billy Gilbert (who had a celebrated sneezing routine) … Read more
The dwarfs, who began life as earthy, ugly little men, were animated in a rather more endearing style by Fred Moore (who had been responsible for the roly-poly look of the Three Little Pigs), Bill Tytla, Fred Spencer and Frank Thomas. Three of the studio’s youngest animators – Milt Kahl, Eric Larson and Jim Algar … Read more
Much of the original fairy-tale was simplified – the three attempts made by the Queen to destroy Snow White, for example, were reduced to one – and many of Disney’s more extravagant ideas (including the rock crusher and the forge) were abandoned. One deleted sequence, set in the Queen’s dungeons, was to have shown the … Read more
The use of stock animation to reduce costs, and money from merchandising to finance production, are important considerations for some TV series. David Jefferson discusses these points with film producer Terry Ward. “American producers can make a series popular by spending huge amounts of money on promotion. That’s good for them but it doesn’t do … Read more
A system of stock sequences has enabled a high standard of animation to be achieved within the £18,000 per episode budget. The idea of stock animation is not new, Ward used it on Bananaman and many other studios work this way for TV series. He planned his stock material right from the start, deciding all … Read more
Ward showed me examples from a pile of layouts on his desk. The first had Grandad sitting at the dinner table; he was required to raise his arm and point. “We may not have stock of Grandad pointing in that direction so we use stock for as long as we can and then create new … Read more