Disney — Frames to Fame
Walt Disney’s character conceptualization and eventual rise to popularity
Whenever the term “animation” comes up in a conversation, it’s always to mixed opinions from the people discussing it. But whether it’s a hardcore fan of animated shows and movies, someone who loves the technical side of the process of animation or just typical people who watch their fair share of movies in general, nobody can deny the influence animation has had on cinematic culture over the years.
Of course, the largest purveyor of the modern western animation industry is Disney, along with all the companies it owns — Pixar, MCU, Lucasfilm and many more. But all the cartoons and iconic characters as we know them have come a long way since nearly a hundred years ago when the animation industry was just starting up and taking off.
Where it all began
Everybody knows the famous Disney catchphrase “It all started with a mouse.” Of course, that line refers to Mickey Mouse and the vintage animated cartoons which launched Walt Disney’s popularity. What most people don’t know is that Mickey Mouse wasn’t the first character Disney designed. How it really all started was with a rabbit. The character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was created when Walt and his brother Roy Disney started the company Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1923.
Back in the day, most animated characters were given defining traits only through their absolute design. What set Disney apart in his creation of Oswald was the personality he was given through his movements and mannerisms. The way his body movements were animated gave him an egotistical, carefree and somewhat immature personality, which made him perfect for providing the signature comedic effect which was popular in the animated cartoons of the era. By 1927, all production rights to Oswald had been bought by Universal Studios, who made him the star of their first cartoon series.
Of course, Oswald wasn’t meant to remain the star of the show — the contract bound him under legal ownership by Universal Studios, and when Walt was asked to make unreasonable budget cuts in the production and reduce the size of his team, he was forced to forfeit the contract and leave Oswald behind. The 2015 movie Walt Before Mickey describes the early days of Walt’s animation career in detail.
The Mickey Mouse era and Disney’s first animated feature
The first animated short released by Walt Disney was the iconic Steamboat Willie, which became an instant hit and is iconic even today — appearing at the start of several animated Disney films.
Several modern-day critics believe that the scene where Mickey is driving the steamboat and whistling to himself is the most iconic cartoon scene of the 20th century. Notice something slightly different about Mickey in this scene?
It’s because it wasn’t until his 5th animated short The Opry House that Mickey’s gloves were added to the character’s design. The short features Mickey attempting to play the piano, which provides emphasis to the feature.
As the development of the cartoon progressed, the character design of Mickey Mouse evolved rapidly, sometimes between several consecutive shorts released. This series of Mickey Mouse cartoons accounted for the success of the company and the rising popularity of animated cartoons in general.
Mickey Mouse and the other characters in the series were animated using a popular technique known as “squash and stretch”. The idea is that the bodies of characters, as well as some objects, are shown to compress and elongate from different sides depending on how they move. For example, as a ball falls down, it’ll be elongated into a vertical oval shape, till it hits the ground and is squished for a moment into a horizontal oval before regaining its original shape.
The effect gives a natural and more three-dimensional flow to the mechanical movements. Moreover, it plays a key role in imparting a lot of personality and life to individual characters, depending on the extent and manner in which it is used while animating the body.
The Mickey Mouse series had about 75 animated shorts released within its first five years and went on to produce 130 in total.
Of course, Walt began to look into new ventures for his company, and eventually, the process of making the world’s first-ever animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs began. The film came out in 1937 and was an immediate success.
The movie was made by painstakingly and impeccably hand-drawing every frame. There was no rotoscoping in most of the scenes — rotoscoping is an animation technique in which the footage is shot with live actors and the frames are traced over glass. Disney believed that the beauty in animation is not in its truthfulness to reality, but in the caricature effect which cartoons provide. This creates an exaggeration of reality, which according to Disney, is what leads to the appeal of cartoons in the first place.
However, despite the cartoonish appearance of the characters in the film which remained typical to the Disney brand for the many years of films to come, the colour scheme and compositions were given a dark undertone. The film, while quite simplistic and far from serious in terms of its storyline, can give off an unsettling vibe to most modern Disney fans.
After the instant box office success and vast critical praise which Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs received, Disney began producing several more feature-length animated movies, which would come to define the company. Over the course of the next few films, Disney and his animators experimented with many different art styles.
This first chapter in the production of Disney movies is known as the “Golden Age” of Disney. The most prominent movies from that time are Bambi, Pinocchio, Fantasia and Dumbo. In each one, he took a step further in the animation techniques, character designs and themes.
Disney went on to become a household name through the many years of work he put into furthering the entertainment industry. The spirit of this master storyteller will continue to live in our minds for generations to come.
This article was written in collaboration with Antony Terence, Abhishek Ramachandran and Adhithya Sundar.
