THE PROCESS OF HOW WALT DISNEY REVOLUTIONIZED ANIMATION REPORT ~ Sawyer Rhys Vertanen
Have you ever watched an old Disney animated film and seen some pencil lines? That is because back then there were no computers, or any of the fancy stuff we have today. They only really had paper and really, really big, expensive cameras. These cameras would take a picture of the drawing one at a time. For my 8th grade project I have chosen to do The Process of how Walt Disney Revolutionized Animation. Ever since I was 3 years old, I have always loved going to Disney World and going to the movie theater to see the newest Disney movie. So, I decided why not do my project on something I love and am interested in? I’ve always been intrigued by how Walt Disney and his crew drew and painted everything for their films and cartoons.
One of the first cartoons Walt Disney ever made was Trolley Troubles with Oswald The Lucky Rabbit on September 5, 1927. This was made before he started Disney and from when he was working at Universal. But one year later he came up with Steamboat Willy, which can be seen at the beginning of every Disney movie. He looks very familiar to someone we all know as Mickey Mouse, who was created later the same year!
Through the years Walt made many cartoons such as Three Little Pigs in 1933, The Big Bad Wolf in 1934, Playful Pluto the same year, then in 1938, Disney released their first ever movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs! This movie did so well in theaters, and everyone loved it so much that Disney decided to make another film in 1940. Pinocchio! Now Disney knew they had something good going on, so they released their 4th movie (which is one of my favorite Disney movies) one year after Pinocchio in 1941, called Dumbo! Now pretty much every year Disney is making and releasing movies, and of course they are still making cartoons for TV. Comment by sawyer vertanen:
Back then, they didn’t have computers to create films, they only had paper. There would be one or more people drawing a character on a sheet of paper on a light board, then another page would be placed on top and the next movement would be drawn. This would be repeated over and over until you had a whole scene. Then the pages were photographed and sequenced one at a time while someone was watching through a small screen to see if the photos went together. Once Walt Disney gave the “okay” to the rough draft of the film, the pages were brought to another room where “pretty girls” would cover the pages in transparent celluloid and draw over the pencil lines with ink. Next, the paint was mixed and created by chemists with their own secret ingredients. Then the characters would be painted with color. And finally, the backgrounds were painted with water color. These backgrounds could take months to create! When the pages were closer to being finished, the celluloids were placed on top of a background and were photographed and sequenced like before. In some films like Snow White...
