An Adventure in Absorbing Animation

How an opportune afternoon, aimed at attuning a young mind to the good old Disney cartoons, turned into a child-minder's unintended observation of, education into and information on, the Magic of Animation. 

The day started by driving into town and parking by the river, where we took a ferry downstream, skirting alongside the Central Business District of Brisbane, with its sky-rise cloud-punching buildings and its various river crossing bridge structures, some impressive, some less so, to arrive at the Queensland Museum. Here we would, hopefully, be able to rely on this visiting Disney exhibition to grab the attention of our grandson for long enough to settle his current flighty attention-span and to give all within earshot a brief respite from the barrage of why, where, what or when, and to stave off his eventual tedium and boredom.

The first few exhibits proved enthralling enough, encouraging small hands to interact and participate, but, quicker than Spiderman goes up a drainpipe, the displays of mostly two dimensional cartoon drawings ('cartoon' in the initial sketch presentation sense), failed to entertain as much as we had hoped. Even video extracts of some of our young could-be fan's favourite animated movies didn't focus his imagination for long enough to calm the flight of his bumble bee-like buzzing mind.  

Luckily oma was in attendance and kept him enthralled with her usual attentive patience. This afforded mamma and grandpa the chance to explore in some depth the mechanics (and in some cases 3D models) on display from the Disney workshops, and to attempt to understand how the magic portrayed on screen comes to fruition. 

We were surrounded by an audience of not only adoring children, come to see their favourite animated characters, but of artists, designers  and, I suspect, teachers.  Many of these older admirers of Disney's screen depictions had borrowed one of the sketch pads on loan at the entrance to the exhibition, and were busily creating their own take on the many images contained in various single or composite, self standing cut-outs or framed wall-hanging features. 

The single most enthralling exhibit for me, however, comprised a revealing summary of the workings of the ‘multiplane camera’.

Back in the days before the personal computer and, eventually, robust and commercially available ranges of animation software and computer graphics, the challenge in such studios as Disney's was to create a three dimensional effect for the audience, using in essence two dimensional characters and backdrops.  In order to achieve this illusion of depth, an innovative photography technique was developed back in the 1930s, whereby multiple layers of background art were painted in oil on various stacked and parallel glass plates, set beneath a vertically set, downwards pointing movie camera. The following wording was captured from this display:

“By moving various different planes in the lateral and vertical directions at different rates, and photographing each movement one frame at a time, it is possible to imbue a filmed 2D image with a 3D sense of depth and space.  Moving planes laterally creates a sense of depth.  Moving planes vertically towards the camera creates the illusion that the viewer is moving through the plane and further into the picture.”

Although not the original mechanical set-up to use this technique, Disney's multiplane camera was relatively sophisticated (refer the drawing and photo below, both of which I snapped with my phone from the display exhibit, as we weren't permitted to take in large cameras).    

This then ground-breaking device was reportedly first used in 1937 in The Old Mill short film . The multiplane camera was also used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (also in 1937) and later in Pinocchio (1942).  It also featured “prominently” in Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, Alice in wonderland, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty and the Jungle Book. The Little Mermaid was where the multiplane was finally used by Disney Studios, after which the Computer Animation Process System (CAPS) made it obsolete.  After Googling CAPS, I found that this comprises “a proprietary collection of software, scanning camera systems, servers, networked computer workstations, and custom desks developed by the Walt Disney Company together with Pixar during the late-1980s.”

If my above rather simplified description of the workings of the multiplane fails to let you visualise the 2D to 3D process, then please make sure that you take time out to watch the following video on YouTube, which was also on display at the multiplane camera exhibit.

It appears then that: 

Multiplane's deep animation, 

From flat art to 3D sensation, 

Used quick moving pics, 

With stacked glass slide tricks,

To bring joy across all the nation.

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When not researching the weird or the wonderful, the comical or the cultured, the sinful or the serious, I chase my creative side, the results of which can be seen as selected photographs of my travels on my website at:

https://ken-boddie.squarespace.com 

The author of the above, Ken Boddie, besides being a sometime poet and occasional writer, is an enthusiastic photographer, rarely leisure-travelling without his Canon, and loves to interact with other like-minded people with diverse interests.

Ken's three day work week (part time commitment) as a consulting engineer allows him to follow his photography interests, and to plan trips to an ever increasing list of countries and places of scenic beauty and cultural diversity.

#disney  #multiplanecamera  #magicofanimation  #cartoon  #animation