I found this story about Disney re-using... I guess reference drawings interesting, but not for the reason intended. What I find interesting is that the video isn't at all what I would have used. They talk about re-using animation, which Disney does, but the drawings they show in the video require a more subtle eye. The animation in the video seems to be several pieces that use the same reference art. This isn’t taking cells from an old movie and putting them in the back ground to create a livelier city scene (watch Robin Hood and then Mickey's Christmas Carol* one right after the other and you'll see what I mean) or inserting old animation into a scene because you want to re-use a character but don’t feel like making fresh drawings (Mickey’s Christmas Carol again) or anything like that.
What you have in this video are shots where characters were animated the exact same twice, sometimes right down to the waggle of a head or flicker of an ear. That I find very interesting. The scenes still had to be drawn, inked and painted by hand, but they clearly follow the same reference sketches over which I find interesting. I’m not sure pointing out the dance at the end of Beauty and the Beast is fair though, or at least it’s no great discovery, since it was intended.
Like I said though, it seems sort of petty to point these out the way the story does. Calling them lazy or stupid when they were merely trying to save money during a difficult time. Particularly in the 70s and early 80s Disney, as a company, got its ass handed to it. There almost was no Disney after Walt died, so they did a few things to cut a little bit of expense while trying new techniques and trying to tell different kinds of stories. I find it interesting that while those days had some questionable animation, the stories they were telling into those dark days were some of the company’s more diverse and interesting. Hell, one of the end results is that it got us The Black Cauldron, which is still one of their most underrated films.
It really makes me bristle since I know of far more direct ways they really reused drawings and cells (really, watch Mickey’s Christmas Carol with a careful eye, half that thing was reused animation) to mind a few sketches being drawn over again. They did have some lazy days, but for the most part they tried like crazy to make a product that would let them spend their dwindling resources in an interesting and innovative way.
And that’s really strange coming from me because I don’t even like Disney Features that much. I’m more of a fan of their strange little experimental bits that came in the form of shorts like The Truth about Mother Goose (here is part two of that cartoon), Pigs is Pigs and Jack and Old Mac to the full length stuff that had to rely on stories and less nuttiness.
Hey look! I can embed the video directly! The video is interesting, but I wouldn’t use it as a comment on laziness so much as a comment on how one can creatively reuse source drawings in a way people won’t notice for 30 years.
*I'm not saying Mickey's Christmas Carol is bad because of that, I'm jsut saying they do reuse a lot of animation. I say it's bad for other reasons which you can read here.
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