The Amazing Evolution of Disney Animation

The Evolution of Disney Animation

Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’ll be looking at The Evolution of Disney Animation.

For this video, we’ll be looking at just how much Disney’s animation process has developed and progressed since Walt first put pen to paper.

What’s your favorite Disney era? Let us know in the comments.

To quote the great Walt Disney, “Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.” In 1928, Disney sat at the back of a theater while an astonished audience watched the first-ever fully sound-synchronized cartoon, “Steamboat Willie”. After seeing “The Jazz Singer”, the first “talking movie”, Disney realized that this was the future of cinema, and revolutionized animation starting with one Mickey Mouse. Although his first two shorts, “Plane Crazy” and “The Gallopin' Gaucho”, were initially silent films, they were later released with sound. Disney went on to produce several other successful shorts including a series of “Silly Symphonies”. He was also the pioneer of technicolor cartoons. In fact, his first full-color short in 1932, “Flowers and Trees”, became the first cartoon ever to win an Oscar.

While Mickey and friends were bringing in the cheese, Walt set his sights on full-length features. Many thought that this could be “Disney’s folly”, but the success of 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” proved them wrong. The multiplane camera used in the movie once again put Disney at the helm of animation innovation. Rather than redraw each frame to indicate transitions, multiple animation cels were set up in a way that created the illusion of a movement. It was more time and labor-efficient, and helped bring their two-dimensional drawings to life. Walt went on to introduce groundbreaking theatrical surround sound too in “Fantasia”. These films were part of Disney’s “Golden Age”, which also included movies like “Pinocchio”, “Dumbo”, and “Bambi”.

When the US entered World War II, Walt Disney Studios was hit hard. Animators were drafted, budgets were tightened, and the army took over their Burbank location. Bereft of a European audience, movies like “Pinocchio”, which were expected to do well, failed to bring in the revenue the studio needed. They were forced to make extreme cuts which led to a major labor strike. To avoid bankruptcy, Disney shelved plans for further feature-length movies and instead turned to shorter, analogy-style propaganda movie packages in concord with the U.S. army. Even with tight constraints, Disney continued to experiment with abstract ideas and created more of Walt’s signature thinking, feeling, and expressive characters. Movies like “Saludos Amigos” and“The Three Caballeros” helped boost public morale and pulled Disney through this tough period.

After the war, Walt and his team, affectionately nicknamed the “Nine Old Men”, brought back some of that ol’ pre-war magic with their next feature-length movie, 1950’s “Cinderella”. This film kicked off the silver era of Disney with glass slippers and a Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo! They hired actors for live-action references, a technique they repeated for “Sleeping Beauty”, “Alice in Wonderland”, “101 Dalmatians”, and even “Peter Pan”. Although, they soon learned it takes more than faith, trust and pixie dust to illustrate weightlessness. Then, in 1955 “Lady and the Tramp” became their first widescreen movie. It was “One Hundred and One Dalmatians”, however, that really marked technological advancements with the introduction of Xerography.

The use of Xerography in animation came about after the release of “Sleeping Beauty”. The artistry was certainly exquisite but ultimately a very pricey flop that almost caused Walt to shut up shop. However, his longtime collaborator, Ub Iwerks, took physicist Chester Carlson’s new photocopying invention and adapted it for animation. This allowed the artists’ drawings to be directly printed onto the animation cels. It was more cost-efficient and eliminated the need for hand-inking, just in time to photocopy an array of spots onto 101 dalmatians. The silver era was the most successful in Walt’s lifetime. It ended with “The Jungle Book” in 1967 which, sadly, he never got to see completed due to his passing the year prior.

Without Walt at the wheel and the “Nine Old Men” reaching retirement, young, fresh-faced animators were taking over. With tighter budgets, they started recycling old unused material. They also detoured from classic fairy tales, instead giving us stories like “The Aristocats”, “Robin Hood”, “The Rescuers” and “The Fox and the Hound”. “The Black Cauldron”’s dark content caused friction among audiences and animators. However, the stand-out movie of this era was “The Great Mouse Detective”, released in 1986. The animators attempted a never-done-before cross-over between hand-drawn illustrations and CGI, really bringing the images to life. Audiences could feel like they were right there in the action!

In 1989, “The Little Mermaid” made quite the splash, both launching Disney’s Renaissance Era and introducing new technology. The Computer Animation Production System, or CAPS, was developed by Pixar. It incorporated the multiplane feature and created higher quality animation and more of a three dimensional feel. A noteworthy example is the ballroom scene in “Beauty and the Beast”. In 1990, “The Rescuers Down Under” became their first completely digital feature film. While CAPS expanded the possibilities for animators, it didn’t come without its limitations. Ariel was originally supposed to have curly hair but the technology simply wasn’t advanced enough to create individual strands. Well, not yet.

During this time, Disney had just about perfected the xerography technique, so why fix what isn’t broken? Well, in 1986, Disney caught wind of new technology being developed by the team at Pixar, led by Steve Jobs. They saw the potential to revolutionize animation and decided to collaborate, bringing us their first joint feature film, “Toy Story”, in 1995. Pixar’s animation had more realistic textures and used color palettes that made their worlds look real. In his day, Walt reimagined animation by creating expressive characters but, now, Pixar was taking that to the next level. Their visuals were phenomenal and the stories captured hearts and box office profits everywhere.

Disney realized that to compete with Pixar, it would have to embrace the latest technologies too. Kicking off the Post-Renaissance Era, “Dinosaur” became the first computer-animated movie in the Disney Animated Canon. However, while the characters were animated, the backgrounds were mostly live-action. Their first fully computer animated movie was actually “Chicken Little”. While Disney was busy mastering the technology, their stories suffered. Meanwhile, their competition, Pixar, was putting out blockbusters like “Finding Nemo” and “The Incredibles”. Luckily, “Lilo & Stitch” was a hit, but movies like “The Emperor’s New Groove” weren’t very profitable and “Treasure Planet” actually lost the studio money. “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” saw the studio turning to online promotion. Then, in 2006, they made their first major acquisition: they bought out Pixar.

This merger steered Disney back onto the road to success. “The Princess and the Frog” marked the end of traditional animation, making way for tech that just 20 years earlier was unimaginable. Now software like “Quicksilver” created realistic hair that responded to its environment. As director Byron Howard told The Wall Street Journal, with CGI, they could render 100,000 pieces of hair. “It’s almost a character in itself,” he added. In movies like “Frozen” and “Moana”, the elements also became characters in their own right. Animators were able to make them look realistic but, most importantly, they were able to bring them to life! If one thing’s for sure: they’ve absolutely mastered the craft of anthropomorphism. Just look at “Zootopia”!

Now that they were nailing the art of CGI, Disney came full circle by creating short films, much like Walt did at the start of his career. These started as in-house conceptions where animators were free to experiment with the latest innovative technology and storytelling, and take bigger risks. A program called “Short Circuit” let anyone across the entire studio pitch ideas which was, by the looks of it, a pretty great system. “Paperman” even ended up winning an Academy Award. Of course, Pixar was releasing plenty of shorts, too. The launch of Disney+ provided the ideal home for many of these shorts.

In recent years, Disney has also begun to revisit some of our favorite stories and characters, giving them a live-action makeover. Even though there are countless adaptations being put out, this certainly doesn’t mean they’ve left animation behind. In the past, movies like “Mary Poppins”, “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and even Walt’s “Alice Comedies” combined animation and live-action. Who knows, maybe we’ll see more of this overlapping in the future, especially with their newly acquired skills and technology pushing things several steps further.

In 1988, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” was particularly groundbreaking in the world of special effects, due to the way the characters interacted. The same technology was used in the “Pirates of the Caribbean”, the 2019 “Aladdin '', many of the MCU movies, and the “Jurassic Park” franchise. In terms of live-action adaptations, Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland” used so much green screen that the cast was left a tad nauseous. The 2016 “The Jungle Book” relied heavily on computer-generated imagery and, only three years later, “The Lion King” took a huge leap forward, combining live-action techniques, top-notch state-of-the-art virtual reality tools, and computer-generated animation.

Disney has been such an integral part of our lives for generations, and we can’t wait to see what they come up with next. After all, it was Walt Disney who said “If you can dream it, you can do it.”