Mark Mayerson and Thad Komorowski (whose blogs I should have added to my BlogRoll a long time ago, recently rectified) posted an excellent video each on the subject of animation re-use. The first, posted by Mr. Mayerson, shows many examples of Disney animation re-use, particularly in the films of director Wolfgang Reitherman. Warning: this video is set to a jaunty chanson française.
The second, created by Mr. Komorowski, shows many examples of extensive animation re-use in cartoons by famed director Bob Clampett. Warning: this video is set to awesome music by Raymond Scott.
I find this stuff fascinating, especially the Disney one. It’s like rotoscoping². It also appears that dancing is difficult/laborious/expensive to animate from scratch. But: why bother completely re-doing something picayune but complicated like a dancing scene when the audience hasn’t seen the original version in years? The re-use of animation in the dancing scene is certainly not the biggest problem occurrant in Disney’s Robin Hood, nor the most egregious example.
[...] to Dark Roasted Blend for the heads up on this video. More on this topic from The Journal of Cartoon Over-analyzations. Bookmark [...]
The repetition is probably done for the same reason every fast food chain has a distinctive iconography. It would work to link the films together in the viewers subconscious and increase the sense of nostalgia that Disney often relies on to peddle their wares.
This makes me wonder if the choreography itself could be copyrighted? Anyone that maybe works in theater know how that might work?
Hmm, very interesting.
I’d imagine as it progressed these complex scenes have become a way to tribute the previous films and work done on them as much as to cut costs.
The animation is truely beautiful. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
The Big Snooze opening sequence , in which Bugs traps Elmer inside a log and rolls it toward a cliff each time Elmer tries to exit, reuses the animation from the 1941 Tex Avery cartoon All This and Rabbit Stew. . Elmer was simply drawn in over the animation of the black hunter, right down to the same body poses and facial expressions.
In fact, in Big Snooze the animation of Elmer Fudd checking the ground underneath him is rotoscoped of the black hunter doing the same thing.
Cool
As a way of saving time and money, cartoon studios reused animation drawings from earlier shorts in new cartoons. At Warner Bros., this practice was most frequently employed during the 1930s (the Great Depression era). It began to decline somewhat during the 1940s and, with Bob Clampett’s departue in 1946, its use fell drastically. By the 1960s, reusing animation was overshadowed by other cost-cutting methods. Yet, it was still used a few times during this decade.
A distinction should be made between reused animation and reused gags.