Easier, I would think. With skeletal animation, I think you could apply the same animation to a different model, as long as their anatomy was approximately similar. I’m not a modeller or an animator though, so I don’t know.

Animation historian Michael Barrier has some insight into this practice:

http://www.michaelbarrier.com/Home%20Page/WhatsNewArchivesMar09.htm#dejavualloveragain

I have some limited experience with 3D modeling and animation, and I’m with 13tales: it’s easier. With 3D animation, the movements are a separate object from the character, so you can literally copy-paste one character’s movements onto another character. I’ve noticed instances of this in 3D animated Disney TV shows, like Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (ugh!). I can usually spot when one character is moving in a way that is typical of a different character.

Another interesting thing is that characters tend to take on the movements typical of the animator, because the animators often observe their movements and use them as a reference for how the characters should move. As a result, different characters animated by the same animator may move in a similar way.

Secondly the Aristocats , Robin Hood, The Jungle book all date from the period when Disney got their first Xerox machines capable of copying onto acetates. So from original cells they could generate new cells at the press of a button. So the elephants march in from either direction at a fraction of the cost simply by flipping the acetates before sending them to paint.

CGI 3D animation is easier to reuse, the mesh rig and set up that is, the rendering will still take forever.

You can set up several character animations and interpolate between them varying the attack/fairing between the moves. This is how modern games respond so fluidly BTW.

Oh and I am a 3D modeller/animator and come from feature hand animation before that.

I actually think this sort of stuff is really REALLY smart.

At the time these films were made no one anticipated the advent of VHS or DVD or Blue Ray so as well as there being a lot of scene reuse there is also the endless number of dicks drawn onto characters that had to be combed out for DVD release.

I know I drew a few.

I know I drew a few.”

I am now fascinated. How is it that no-one else has commented on this? Pics?

And what does a “Mannheim scream” sound like? Examples?

They used live-action models to more precisely capture the fluidity of movement (which they then could exaggerate for comic effect). Walt Disney himself is said to have acted out all the parts of “Snow White” many, many times, to the point where it might be said that his self is as much represented on the screen as if he had drawn the cells by his own hand. Disney was always defying the odds and economies of animation. What company today, would risk as much, sink as much time and effort into development, as Disney did to get animation off the novelty ground?

One aspect of WDC that persisted up through the Eisner years, was their proprietary sense of the value and worth of their properties. Not merely as cash cows, but of creations of real and lasting merit. There is a dividing line between development and exploitation, and Eisner lost sight of the boundry and started to carelessly liquidate properties. So this mining of their own backyard by Disney is in the company’s DNA. Also, working comics always recycled material.

Boingboing entry at http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/05/disney-animators-swi.html

links to example photos at http://www.hemmy.net/2006/04/26/disney-animation-reuse/

Ofcourse, the Belle/Cinderella dance was a purposfully done call back and reference to the then unparraleled great age of Disney animation, intended to strengthen its claim to being a modern part of the Disney cannon, so it was a reuse with a politic.

Yeah, I’ve spent too much time studying film.

But My God, the spare time whoever put this together must have.

Cartoons have also copied, where the stage action suddenly stops, because a performer has ended up getting tossed from the stage and into the audience, a ‘sub-routine’ then gets performed before rejoining the other performers and the action starting again where it left off, or whatever. In the cartoon equivalent, the cartoon caricature is then shown climbing back into the frame (which has been shrunk to show it for what it is).

The noticeable absence in Disney’s renditions is the heavy peppering of ‘double entendre’ in the dialogue.

While it’s surprising that they’ve done SO much of this (the composition of the video exposing it is quite artful in itself), I find myself not feeling let down at all. Just seems efficient, really.

Of course, if you’re someone who memorises Disney dance sequences you’d be bothered, but if you’re someone who memorises Disney dance sequences, you’re already dealing with some challenges.

“Bluddle-uddle-um-dum (Dwarfs’ Washing and Yodel Song)”
Music by Frank Churchill
Lyrics by Larry Morey
Sung by the dwarfs

And I’d guess that the Cinderella/Beauty and the Beast comparison was trying to be an homage, not a rip-off.

The song is from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it’s called ‘The Silly Song’.

Obviously it’s not in the original English, French, maybe?

The English lyrics are:
Yodel:
Ho-la-la-ee-ay
Ho-la-la-ee-ay
Ho-la-la-ee-ay-ee-la-ee-ay-ee-lee-ay
Ho-la-la-ee-ay
Ho-la-la-ee-ay
Ho-la-la-ee-ay-ee-la-lee-ay-lee-o-lee-ay

(repeat)

I’d like to dance and tap my feet
But they won’t keep in rhythm
You see, I washed them both today
And I can’t do nothing with ‘em

Chorus
Ho hum the tune is dumb
The words don’t mean a thing
Isn’t this a silly song
For anyone to sing?

I chased a polecat up a tree
Way out on upon a limb
And when he got the best of me
I got the worst of him

(Chorus)

(Yodel, etc.)

As some other people on here have noted it was a money saver but the plain truth of it was that disney’s key animators, the nine old men were getting OLD. The older animators could no longer handle huge amounts of work and young animators had not been trained yet. If you look at the timeline of disney animated movies the cycling stops when fresh blood was brought in (early eighties round bout with the great mouse detective)

Animation depends heavily on the talent at hand Disney film production has gone through ebb and flow periods depending on three things. Time talent and funding.

Interesting comments about the animators’ creations taking on their movement characteristics.

That said, it’s pretty smart. That way you can get cheap artists who have learned how to draw the basic character, but know nothing about animating, and have them just trace over the old animations.

Ralph Bakshi is another famous rotoscoper. His films aren’t quite at the level of disney but at least he didn’t reuse footage as much… well, except for his army scenes which were taken straight off of the Alexander Nevsky ( a royalty free Russian cinematic masterpiece that later inspired Starwars and Conan ). I guess this was some of the first creative commons art works.