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.

There’s a new feature here at J. Cart. Overanal., and it’s called Mini-Analyzations! We’ll throw these up a few at a time. These below are all from the old archives.

Again, don’t hesitate to send in your own.

• I guess it’s worth mentioning that of the 101 dalmatians, the minority of them had blue collars. This has implications ranging from gender discrimination (the color of the collar is associated to the character’s gender) to socio-economic generalizations toward blue collar workers.
  - Contributed by Fawzi
• In Robotech, haven’t you noticed that the RDF is considered a defense force? Only Japan has a national defense force, and since the show was animated in Japan, it would be obvious that they would be a defense force. If the show was animated in the United States, they would be the Robotech Army.
  - Contributed by Seprihoth5
• If you will note at the beginning of The Simpsons, the “Simps” part is visible before the “ons” part. This is undoubtedly a reference to the word(s) “simpleton” or “simple-minded,” etc.
  - Contributed by Peter I.
• In Transformers, all the bad guys were some kind of flying object and the good guys were some type of vehicle.
  - Contributed by LUVMYHALEYBUG
• The native country of Boris Badunov and Natasha Fatale, Pottsylvania, is basically a combination of the extreme American stereotypes of World War II Germany and Cold War Russia.
  - Contributed by The Editor