Inspiration: Master Animators at Work - Disney Studio

Always interesting to see the process.  These behind-the-scenes movies  from the Disney Studio in the late 1930's /early 1940's show the traditional animation process.   Some of the process has been simplified or glossed over because these "documentaries" were produced for a mass audience , but there is still good information to be gained from these films and it's fascinating to see some famous animators like Fred Moore and Norm Ferguson at their animation desks.





Here's another one: "How Walt Disney Cartoons are Made (Burbank version)" made around the time of Snow White's release for the theater distributors who worked for RKO Pictures (the company that distributed Disney's films in the late 1930's /early 40's) . This footage shows both the late 30's Hyperion Blvd. studio as well as the "new" Disney studio in Burbank from the early 1940's -



A better quality version of this footage (without sound) is available here:

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675074181_Walt-Disney-Animation-Studio_artists-add-colors_artist-draws-sketch_flip-book

In particular the footage of Fred Moore working at his animation desk starts around the 1:55 mark in the above link (not embeddable, so you'll have to click through the link to see the footage) .

Some of this footage has been re-used in different "behind-the-scenes" documentaries about Disney.


A version of this was released to theaters for general audiences , titled "How Walt Disney Cartoons are Made" . Some , but not all of the footage is identical:




And here's a similar sort of newsreel report going behind-the-scenes at the Fleischer Studio in Miami, Florida, about 1939 -

Inspiration: Pencil Tests - deleted scenes from Snow White

 During the making-of Walt Disney's  "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" several sequences were started and then abandoned due to story changes or pacing issues.

Walt made the difficult decision to cut sequences that had already been completely animated , for the good of the overall pacing of the film.   Fortunately for us the Disney Studio preserved the original drawings and the pencil test footage so we can view these "lost" scenes :

The Soup Sequence -  (Dwarfs animated mainly by Ward Kimball,  with some scenes by Fred Spencer, Bill Tytla, Marvin Woodward, Dick Lundy and Bill Roberts. Snow White animated by Grim Natwick)




Here's the link to see the Bedroom Fight Scene between Grumpy and Doc (Dwarfs animated by Fred Moore , Snow White animated by Grim Natwick , with a couple of scenes of Snow White animated by Jack Campbell) .  Embedding is disabled , so you'll have to click through to YouTube to watch it:

Bedroom Fight sequence Pencil Test -- CLICK HERE to view --