I was thrilled last week to be given the opportunity to revisit Disney's original Xerox "machine" in the old Ink & Paint Department on the Disney Studio Lot. This thing STILL WORKS, after all these decades.
Ub Iwerks had developed this "two room" contraption in 1959 in order to reproduce animators' drawings straight onto cels. The costly process of inking cels was eliminated. From then on Disney characters appeared with black outlines. Walt Disney was not happy originally with this new look, but when 101 Dalmatians was such a box office smash, Walt eventually accepted this new aesthetic.
The current Ink & Paint Disney department is very small. There is no need for production cels anymore, but special cels are still being painted for Disney employees.
Here is a link to a previous post on Disney's xerox:
https://andreasdeja.blogspot.com/2014/05/xerox.html
oh, very cool! It reminded me of this 'making of' clip that shows the xerox process they used in the Roger Rabbit shorts later on, it looks like more or less the same thing.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/FdYkmrqbG98?t=822
I've seen other cel transfer processes that use a much smaller machine, but I'm not sure exactly how it works
https://youtu.be/4MZA-ov99LU?t=77
Disney's animators still had some top-flight assistants following them up in the Xerox years. The animation they did is great, and it's fun to see the occasional sketch line on film-- especially from guys like John Lounsbery. His animation of Rabbit in Pooh and the Honey Tree is all over the place towards the end (which, I confess, I find very entertaining), but his linework is bold and committed and arguably takes full advantage of the process.
ReplyDeleteSame goes for the cleanup in Mickey's Christmas Carol and The Great Mouse Detective... those characters feel so alive in spite of the thick black outlines! I still say it's a shame Disney pivoted from that in the CAPS era.
I know that some people don't care for the Xerox style in the films of the 60's and 70's, but I really do. I remember Floyd Norman, in his interview with TAG, that they originally were gonna use a special grey Xerox technique for "Mary Poppins" but ultimately they went with the regular black Xerox line. I wonder why.....
ReplyDeleteI think the black xerox line looks great in Mary Poppins since the actors were supposed to live in a graphic world.
DeleteGrey xerox lines were used later on The Rescuers.
Oh yes, of course. Silly me. Both black and grey Xerox I miss.
DeleteDanke für die Info! 😊
DeleteIch hatte die ganze Zeit über an die Bernhard und Bianca Szene in der Höhle gedacht...War mir aber nur zu 99 Prozent sicher 😁
Do you know if the artists currently making the special limited edition cels ever still use the old Xerox?
ReplyDelete