The evolution of animation in Disney's features
Since Home on the Range is the last hand drawn feature animation from Disney, it could be interesting to see how the animation has evolved the last decades.
When Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs came out, up-to-date technologies
like colors, sound and the multiplane camera were already in use. It is hard to believe that just a few years earlier most cartoons were being made without colors or sound.
Well, this is what I have found out (and if someone knows anything more, what about telling about it?):
The first feature animations were really traditional seen whith modern eyes. All the movies were done by hand:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Pinocchio (1940)
Fantasia (1940)
Dumbo (1941)
Bambi (1942)
Saludos Amigos (1943)
The Three Caballeros (1945)
Make Mine Music (1946)
Fun and Fancy Free (1947)
Melody Time (1948)
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mister Toad (1949)
Cinderella (1950)
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Peter Pan (1953)
Lady and the Tramp (1955)
Sleeping Beauty (1959)
This ends the original way of producing Disney's Classics. From here on Xerography is used in the process, giving the animation a special sketchy
look:
One-Hundred-and-One Dalmatians (1961)
The Sword and the Stone (1963)
The Jungle Book (1967)
The AristoCats (1971)
Robin Hood (1973)
The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh (1977)
Finally the Xerography process was improved considerably with innovations like color-xerography:
The Rescuers (1977)
The Fox and the Hound (1981)
New technologies were introduced in the animation business, like the APT (Animation Photo Transfer) process, a major change in the method of transferring the artist's drawings to a cel. The introduction of video cameras in the process and not to mention computer technology was an important step forward:
The Black Cauldron (1985)
The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
Oliver & Company (1988)
The Little Mermaid (1989)
Xerography is no longer in use. Disney's "CAPS" (Computer Assisted Production System) production system is introduced, and the process becomes digitalized for real. During this period the animation technology continued to evolve, and resulted in things such as the scene in the Lion King where hundreds of computer generated wildebeests are running without colliding into each other and the "Deep Canvas"-effect we see in movies like Tarzan:
The Rescuers Down Under (1990)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Aladdin (1992)
The Lion King (1994)
Pocahontas (1995)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Hercules (1997)
Mulan (1998)
Tarzan (1999)
Fantasia 2000 (2000)
The Emperor’s New Groove (2000)
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Lilo and Stitch (2002)
Treasure Planet (2002)
Brother Bear (2003)
Home on the Range (2004)
And if we are going to believe Disney, all their future animation will be made in CGI. But if we are looking back at the previous movies, the way of making animation will not stop there. The technology will continue to evolve, and who knows where it is going to end? In his time Disney hated the Xerography process, but look how beatiful the Little Mermaid became even if this process was used to make it. If Disney are going to continue to produce animated movies, movies like Rapunzel Unbraided are hopefully going to improve the CGI technique until people starts wondering why they were against CGI in the first place. (Now I'm talking about the technology, not the scripts and stories.)
But the really traditional classics ended with Sleeping Beauty in 1959.