Post 2: More on Animation

I did some searching through the Watts book and wasn't as successful as I'd hoped - I used the Index as a guide and searched the book for some of the keywords from my original post, and didn't really find anything. I'm sure that a book that's received such high praise must have an extensive section on Disney's animation practices, but perhaps it's just buried a little deeper in the text and it will surface as we get further into our studies. However, in relation to what I wrote on last week, I did find this thanks to Collin's post:

"...The [Kansas City Film Ad] company produced crudely animated one-minute advertising films to be shown at movie theaters before the main feature....Dissatisfied with the techniques of his employers - standard operating procedure was to use paper cutouts of figures, whose joints would be moved and photographed against a background to make them "move" - [Disney] began to explore the drawing process of more sophisticated New York productions. He checked out books on animation and motion from the public library and began compiling a file of tracings and photostats."

I'm still really interested in this and would like to explore it more, in addition to some other innovations such as Collin's mention of the multiplane camera. I hope that this develops into a really interesting topic, something more than just a look at the different types of techniques Disney used - maybe more of a focus on what triggered the use of each one, as seen here.