Disney's Copy/Paste

The story about the oil drum filled with cells tells you how times and priorities change. It reminds of the the story of some moron at NBC in the sixties who decided it would be great to save money and reuse all the old videos they had in a warehouse in New Jersey. So he authorized them to record over the tapes of thousands of hours of programming. That's the reason the first episode of "The Tonight Show" with Johnny carson doesn't exist. It's a shame.

I have to agree with Elizabeth. I think the 'robin hood' cartoon is the culprit. It seems to have taken bits from everything, and it being used as the comparison throughout the entire video (except the end with the dancing).

Copy and paste bums? Really? Obviously it was used as a reference, but like dermot and other people pointed out, there is no actual copy and pasting involved.

I have a lot of respect for animators, its a totally different field these days, with programs like flash doing all the grunt work with tweens, but still difficult.

I like hearing the stories of the old school animators, and I most definitely believe that they liked to knock back a few. Hell, I only have to make one frame when I make a flyer or a poster and I think that's difficult sometimes. Thanks for humbling me, and reminding me how easy my job is.

This is from memory, can't remember who told me, so it's open to correction:

When Disney made "Snow White", they assumed that it would have to be on 24fps (like live action). They were half way through the production when it occured to someone (Roy Disney?) to hold each drawing for 2 frames (putting it on twos). They weren't able to tell the difference for most scenes - which saved a huge amount of time & money).
Again, anecdotal - can't find a reference.

Also heard that a lot of the production crew signed themselves in for medical treatment prior to the completion of Snow White, as they were so over-worked.
(Sorry Adrian, whinging has a long and glorious tradition).

The boozing in that place was pretty intense, btw.

Some more anecdotes:
After Pinnochio (might have been Fantasia) the camera department made a slide in the hallway of the cels from the film, and went skidding down the floor on them. No idea that these things would be worth a bomb years later.

One of my old bosses had worked at Disney animation during the 60s/70s. He and a friend found a huge barrel, like an oil drum, filled with water, and layers and layers of cels. Just left to rot. They fished them out and took them home. One of the guys managed to revive the paint sufficiently to liquidise it (god knows what chemicals he used) in order to cover over the gaps that had flaked off.

Different times!

Interesting video and nice comments of animators! I have recently stumbled upon an article about the same topic, e.g. animators "saving" them some work, but it was about modern cartoons.
Take an anime, for example, or some modern American cartoon (Powerpuff Girls, etc). They have lots of ways not to do too much work. For example, the body of a characters is very often static and only his mouth moves when he is speaking. Or when a character is shocked, they would zoom on his face like three or four times. All that of course means less work (and less money needed) for the animators/studio.
Of course, the animators here know about these tricks. But since I have read said article (which I can't find anymore) I look at cartoons in a different way. :-)