How Animated Cartoons Are Made (back in 1919)

October 8, 2017 9:47 AM

How they made cartoons before Disney: an instructional silent movie from 1919.
posted by MartinWisse (9 comments total)

Is this the first use of the "Oh, I didn't see you there."
posted by RobotHero at 10:23 AM on October 8, 2017 [3 favorites]

Interesting! The implication of cut-out paper layovers makes a lot of sense for relatively simple animation on static backgrounds, even though I'm so used to the idea of traditional transparent cel overlays that it wouldn't have occurred to me that that wasn't always the way it had been done.

Also, the slow pacing of title cards in silent films always kinda throws me.

Is this the first use of the "Oh, I didn't see you there."

Yeah, I had a very Welcome To My Kickstarter Pitch feeling too right at twenty-three seconds in.
posted by cortex at 10:24 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Just sent this to my son who's in the digital animation industry. I'm wondering if the moments of "client approves/asks for revisions" and "subsequent amount of work to revise" have changed all that much in 100 years?
posted by angiep at 11:24 AM on October 8, 2017

I'm wondering if the moments of "client approves/asks for revisions" and "subsequent amount of work to revise" have changed all that much in 100 years?

Not one bit. Except that maybe some of the changes that would have been too time-consuming to do back in those days (ie changing something's size or color, which would have required completely redoing all the animation, if they had made it to the ink-and-paint stage) are now much more trivial-- so a client is more likely to ask for that stuff, knowing it won't impact the bottom line too much.
posted by matcha action at 11:54 AM on October 8, 2017

Interesting to see the pre-lightbulb idea bulb
posted by ckape at 12:57 PM on October 8, 2017

Say what you will about the client review process, but it is true that a woman with a wooden leg doesn't run that way. That's why Mr. Bray gets paid the big bucks.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:34 PM on October 8, 2017 [6 favorites]

The implication of cut-out paper layovers makes a lot of sense for relatively simple animation on static backgrounds

Especially because they were shooting on high-contrast B/W graphic "repro" film, that allowed them to do the sketching and overlay the inking on one sheet. The pencil sketch washes out, as would the shadows on the cut-outs.
posted by StickyCarpet at 2:39 PM on October 8, 2017

The use of comic dialogue bubbles in a silent animated movie is so eminently obvious in retrospect.
posted by fairmettle at 1:43 AM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

> Interesting to see the pre-lightbulb idea bulb

Huh, there was an askme about this recently.
posted by lucidium at 4:13 PM on October 9, 2017