How to Save an Animation Department
The following is an excerpt from Don Iwerks’ wonderful and insightful new book Walt Disney’s Ultimate Inventor: The Genius of Ub Iwerks (Disney Editions, $40):
An excerpt from Walt Disney’s Ultimate Inventor: The Genius of Ub Iwerks.
Laborious Techniques
From the earliest days of animation, making separate drawings for each frame of film was a laborious process. In those days, live-action filming and animation required sixteen frames per second of screen time. For example, a ten-minute short subject required 9,600 original drawings, plus 9,600 traced, inked, and painted cels. When sound was introduced into motion pictures in the late 1920s, the frame rate increased to twenty-four frames per second. At this frame rate, a typical animation feature such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — with a screen running time of eightythree minutes — translates into 119,520 cels! To say this was very labor intensive would be an understatement.
Animation in Peril
Walt’s brother Roy, whose job it was to manage the finances, was always concerned with production costs, and the long gap of time during which the money was invested before
realizing a return. In the early 1950s, Roy and Ub happened to be talking, when Roy mentioned to Ub that because of costs, he was going to recommend to Walt that the studio stop the further production of animated shorts. The studio was beginning to produce live-action films, which did not tie up the financing for as long a period of time as the animated productions. Roy would recommend to Walt
Prior to working in visual effects, Ub Iwerks was largely responsible for creating characters such as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Flip the Frog and Mickey Mouse.
that animated films be curtailed in favor of live-action films.
That conversation left Ub thinking about how some savings could be made in the animation process.
Ironically, at about this time, the Xerox Corporation had introduced the revolutionary Xerox 914, the first plain paper photocopier, which printed images using an electrically charged drum and dry powder “toner.” Ub reasoned that the Xerox system might work to replace the process of tracing and inking cels, so he purchased a desktop copier and proceeded to make some tests.
After these initial tests looked promising, he borrowed a scene of drawings from the Camera Department and proceeded to make Xerox copies on cel material. Ub then asked the Ink and Paint Department to paint the cels, and next had the scene photographed in the Camera Department. After his own private screening of the test, he felt that it was time to show it to Walt.
After dailies one afternoon, Ub mentioned to Walt that he had a test he would like to show him. As the scene was running, Ub explained how the Xerox process was used to produce the “inked” cels. It didn’t take long for Walt to recognize that this was a technical and economic breakthrough.
Walt asked Ub to develop this method and see if it could be adapted for production use. The process was stripped down into the basic functions that take place within a photocopier. Ub consulted with Xerox about his ideas, and together the system was built and integrated into the Disney animation process.
Streamlining a New Method
In order to copy large quantities of drawings onto cels, the system had to operate as efficiently as an automobile production line. Ub took this into account and worked out the details. His plan called for one of the corridors in the Ink and Paint Department to be converted into three separate rooms.
The “camera room,” which emerged from this directive, consisted of a long darkroom with a safelight and included a lens and shutter mechanism mounted into the wall at one end of the room. The lens focused on an illuminated drawing held in a platen in an adjacent room known as the “light side.”
Inside the camera room, the lens focused an image of the drawing onto an aluminum plate with a selenium coating held on the camera platen.
Located next to the camera was a “charger” that applied an electrical charge to the selenium-coated plate prior to exposure. After exposure, the plate was positioned in the rocking tray of the “cascader” that applied the black powder to the exposed plate. As the tray would rock, the black powder would cascade back and forth across the plate leaving powder adhering to areas where the electrical charge remained. (Light reflected from the white areas of the drawing removes the charge from the selenium-coated plate.) The remaining lines corresponded to the pencil lines in the original drawing, and were an exact copy.
A moving belt then transported the plate through a slit in the wall into an adjoining lighted room where the black powder was touched up, and unwanted powder was removed with cotton or cotton swabs.
The next step was the “transfer” machine, which transferred the black powder image from the plate to a cel using static electricity.
After further touch-up, the cel went to the “fuser” machine, which chemically fixed the image to the cel. The selenium plate was then run through the “cleaning” machine brushing off the remaining black powder with a large revolving fur roller, and returned to the camera room via a second moving belt. The plates were stored by the camera, and when needed were recharged, ready to be exposed again.
A useful side benefit of the Xerox system was the ability to enlarge or reduce the image of the drawing by moving the camera room platen. This was similar in function to a modern zoom lens.
The process garnered mixed reviews from the animators. Some were very enthusiastic because it was actually their line drawings being copied, and not traced over by another person. Other animators favored the cleaner black inked lines of traditional inking. But the cost reductions and production efficiency were more than an argument in favor of the new method.
The process was initially tested on select scenes in Sleeping Beauty, notably the crowd scenes where there were many faces to be traced. The Academy Award–nominated 1960 short subject Goliath II was the first film to fully use the Xerox process in animation. For Disney’s next animated feature film, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, the Xerox process was employed for the entire picture.
Xerox Production Escalation
To accommodate increased production, a second and third Xerox camera were constructed, followed by a fourth camera that was dedicated to 1:1 (same size) reproduction. Several more of the inking corridors in the Ink and Paint Department were transformed to accommodate the new Xerox cameras. The cost savings came primarily from increased production rather than a reduction in personnel, as the inkers who would have been displaced by the process were instead trained to operate the camera and the other associated components.
Ub’s adaption of the Xerox process not only saved animation at the studio, but rapidly became an industry tool and is still in limited use today, having now been largely replaced by computers. ◆
‘Ub’s adaption of the Xerox process not only saved animation at the studio, but rapidly became an industry tool and is still in limited use today, having now been largely replaced by computers.’