Cel animation is the art of creating 2D animation by hand on sheets of transparent plastic/celluloid called “cels”. Each cel features one drawing with an outline on one side of the plastic and the color is filled in on the other. These cels are then placed over a painted background and photographed in sequence.

• A lead animator draws rough pencil sketches of each key pose and notes the timing on a dope sheet which dictates the length of time a movement takes and standardizes the sequence of the cels. After the key poses are sketched out and the dope sheet is completed, junior animators draw the in-betweens to smooth the movement between poses.

• The sketches are then given to the Clean-Up Animation crew who will ink the sketches by hand on cels, usually cleaning up the rough pencil scratchings on the sketches.

• Backgrounds are usually drawn with oil, watercolor, acrylic, or gouache.

The MULTIPLANE CAMERA was developed by Disney to create more depth in their images. A multiplane camera splits a field of view into different planes or levels such as the foreground, middle ground, and background which can allow for realistic tracking of backgrounds.

• Snow White: the first animated feature film to use the MULTIPLANE CAMERA.

• Bambi: intro scene

• Pinocchio: intro scene

FANTASOUND is a pioneering stereophonic surround sound system which is essentially stereo sound. This new system would create the illusion that the actual symphony orchestra is playing in the theater. Fantasound employed 2 projectors running at the same time. One projector contained the picture film with a mono soundtrack for backup purposes, the other projector ran a sound film that was mixed from the 8 tracks recorded at the Academy to 4 tracks. 3 of the 4 tracks contained the audio for the left, center, and right stage speakers respectively, while the 4th became a control track with amplitude and frequency tones that drove variable-gain amplifiers to control the volume of the 3 audio tracks. In addition were 3 "house" speakers placed on the left, right, and center of the auditorium that derived from the left and right stage channels, which acted as surround channels.

• Fantasia

COPYFLO was the xerography process developed by Xerox which would allow the transfer of artists drawings onto the cel. Xerography is the process which uses a lens to make a copy of an image. This copy is transferred onto an electro-statically charged plate. The plate is then dipped in toner which was then transferred to a clear animation cel.

• Xerography would reduce the amount of manual labor (thus saving costs) needed to transfer artist’s drawings onto cels. One downside of this technique was all the rough pencil sketches from the animator were also transferred onto the cel. Animators were used to producing sketchy drawings, as the clean-up was done in the process of transferring the drawings to the cells. With the hand inkers gone, the animation remained as the animators drew it.This led to a scratchy outline style.

• One Hundred and One Dalmatians is the first Disney animated feature film to use COPYFLO.

• Later it became common to do clean-up on paper before the animation was copied, and with time and experience, the process improved.

• The Rescuers: a new xerography process was developed that restored a softer outline that previously was not possible with the technology. This allowed the use of a medium-gray tone and even a purple tone for outlines, such as that used for Miss Bianca.

The Animation Photo Transfer (APT) process was developed by David Spencer from the studio’s still camera department. Similarly to xerography, the APT process was a photographic transfer system that can photographically transfer lines or solid blocks of colors onto cels. The drawings are photographed on high-contrast sheet film, and these negatives are then exposed onto the cels. The process relies on UV-sensitive inks that cure when exposed to light and stick to the plastic sheet, while the ink in the non-exposed areas is chemically removed from the sheet.

• Compared to the earlier xerography process used by Disney, the lines can be controlled better and multiple copies made quickly. A line on an animated character can be in color instead of just black. This is known as self-colored lines. Later xerographic lines were able to be rendered in color too, when colored toners became available.

• The Black Cauldron is the first Disney animated feature film to use the APT process.

CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) is a computer-based production system developed by Pixar that was used for digital scanning, ink, paint, and compositing. This allowed for a more efficient and sophisticated post-production of the Disney animated films and made the traditional practice of hand-painting cels obsolete. The animators' drawings and the background paintings were scanned into a computer, where the animation drawings are inked and painted by digital artists, and later combined with the scanned backgrounds in software that allows for camera positioning, camera movements, multiplane effects, and other techniques such as more colors, add transparent shadows, and even have better color blending. It was developed for Disney by Pixar.

• The software allowed for a wider range of colors, as well as soft shading and colored line effects for the characters, techniques lost when the Disney studio abandoned hand inking for xerography in the late 1950s. CAPS also allowed the production crew to simulate multiplane effects: placing characters and/or backgrounds on separate layers and moving them towards/away from the camera on the Z-axis to give the illusion of depth, as well as altering the focus of each layer.

• The Rescuers Down Under is the first Disney animated feature film made entirely with CAPS

In addition, CAPS allowed an easier combination of hand-drawn art with computer-generated imagery, which before had to be plotted to animation cells and painted traditionally.

• Beauty and the Beast: waltz sequence, in which Belle and Beast dance through a computer-generated ballroom as the camera dollies around them in simulated 3D space.

Disney animators commonly used rotoscoping to trace the movements of live action images as reference but used it only as a guide to allow for flexibility with the animation.

The 12 Principles of Animation were standardized and catalogued by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life.

• Squash and stretch

• Anticipation

• Staging

• Straight-ahead action and pose-to-pose

• Follow through and overlapping action

• Slow in and slow out

• Arc

• Secondary action

• Timing

• Exaggeration

• Solid drawing

• Appeal

The Hyperion Renderer is Disney Animation’s proprietary renderer that mimics real-world geometric complexity.

• Previously, Disney Animation was using Pixar’s RenderMan for rendering

• First used in Big Hero 6 particularly the setting of San Fransokyo and the lighting

ATTILA is a crowd simulation software used to allow thousands of unique characters to move autonomously.

• Mulan: crowd simulation

• A variant of the program called DYNASTY was used in the final battle sequence to create a crowd of 3,000 in the Forbidden City.

FAUX PLANE is software used to add depth to flat two-dimensional painting.

• Mulan: the Great Wall of China and the final battle sequence when Mulan runs to the Forbidden City.

DEEP CANVAS is a 3D painting and rendering technique that allows artists to produce CGI backgrounds that look like a traditional painting (i.e. loose, brushstroke-based style without hard edges). The creators were awarded a Technical Achievement Award in 2003 by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

• Tarzan: used to create the sweeping 3D backgrounds

• Atlantis: The Lost Empire: large panoramic shots of the island and several action sequences

• Treasure Planet: 75% of the environments and expanded to support moving objects as part of the background

• Brother Bear: backgrounds

• Home on the Range: backgrounds

CHICKEN WIRE is a geometric wireframe model of the characters that the animators can stretch, squash, and smear. They wanted to recreate a 2D animation style in 3D.

• Chicken Little: used for the characters

SHELF CONTROL makes it possible to see the whole model on the screen while having a direct access to any chosen area of the character

SHAR PEI is a tool built to help wrinkle the characters’ clothes.

XGEN is a look development tool that procedurally generates anything and is used to make something lush and detailed e.g. hair and grass, sprinkle pebbles and dirt on a rooftop, stain sidewalks, and more.

• Chicken Little: look development

• Meet the Robinsons: look development

SHADER EXPRESSIONS is a look development tool that allows artists to create procedural expressions on their own without writing procedural shaders.

• Chicken Little: look development

• Meet the Robinsons: look development

A proprietary 3D PAINT SYSTEM allows artists to work in 3D or import and export views into an external painting program like Adobe’s Photoshop. Together with XGEN and SHADER EXPRESSION, it created a consistent system for all the lookdev tools. As a result, artists working in the 3D paint system could use the SHADER EXPRESSIONS, for example, to generate a texture map with a pattern and then, using the same language, create expressions in XGEN to drive the twisting and drooping parameters for hair or leaves.

• Meet The Robinsons: look development

MEANDER is an in-house software program which merges hand-drawn and computer animation techniques within the same character to create a unique hybrid

• Paperman: characters and style

iGROOM is a a fur-controlling software which gave character designers precise control over the brushing, shaping, and shading of fur

• Bolt: Bolt’s fur

• Zootopia: to create the variety of eccentric character styles for each animal

DYNAMIC WIRES is a program which combines physically based simulations with laws for determining the hairs behavior.

• Tangled: Rapunzel’s hair

SKELETOR is a program which lets artists hand-model 3D geometry on trees

• Tangled: environment

DENDRO is a software lets artists art-grow the growth of the trees and program the direction and amplitude of wind in the tree’s branches and leaves. It also helps calculate how the tree will grow according to environmental factors like gravity, light, and natural obstacles.

• Tangled: environment

Bidirectional reflectance distribution functions allowed for more realistic reflections on surfaces

• Wreck-It Ralph

New virtual cinematography CAMERA CAPTURE system makes it possible to go through scenes in real time

• Wreck-It Ralph

FLOURISH is a program which allowed extra movement such as leaves and twigs to be art-directed

• Frozen: environment

BONSAI is a tree-and-plant generator that served as the successor to DENDRO.

• Frozen: used to create numerous variations of trees with very detailed foliage.

• Big Hero 6: trees in San Fransokyo

SPACES is a program that allowed Olaf's deconstructible parts to be moved around and rebuilt

TONIC is the hair-grooming software that is volume-based and lets artists group the hairs on a character’s heads and move those groups in a certain way

• Frozen: Elsa and Anna’s braided hair

• Moana: expanded TONIC’s capabilities to develop an elastic rod model for Moana and Maui’s curly hair

• Ralph Breaks The Internet: hair of characters

• Encanto: multitude of hairstyles

QUICKSILVER is a hair program that allows animators control how hair is simulated and included rigging and grooming controls. Disney was able to recover some of the expressiveness of hand-drawn animation that could get lost in CG.

• Moana: Moana’s hair

MATTERHORN is Disney’s proprietary physically based simulator used to create realistic and believable virtual environments. It employs the Material Point Method (MPM)

• Frozen: used to create snow effects

• Moana: updated to handle the more viscous substance of lava, mud, foam, sand, etc.

SNOW BATCHER which helped preview the final look of the snow, especially when characters were interacting with an area of snow by walking through a volume.

• Frozen

DENIZEN used to create over 700 distinctive characters

• Big Hero 6: population of San Fransokyo

MOSH PIT is the simulation program used to create the animation of Ralphzilla which involved a simulation of multiple Ralphs.

An ad hoc rigging system was built to allow the animators control to move anything in the Encanto house that they wanted to. The cracks in the house were representative of how that material would crack in real life.

SEEXPR is used to develop textures for shading various materials, point-based effects, and wind effects on cloth.

NITRO is a real-time display application developed since the making of Wreck-It Ralph, was used to make the

• Zootopia: fur more consistent, intact and subtle much more quickly, as opposed to the previous practice of having to predict how the fur would work while making and looking at silhouettes or poses for the character.

PHYSGRID is a volumetric solid solver for simulating soft tissue like muscle and fat. It allows artists to define materials using more traditional weighting techniques than typical simulation methods.

• Zootopia: used in the variety of characters

SPLASH is a simulation engine for their ocean and wave simulations and could simulate waves running, crashing, and breaking. It could also create secondary effects like boat wakes

• Moana: all water simulations

• Frozen 2: the Dark Sea water simulations

DROPLET is a vegetation-placement tool that is designed as an interactive brush and allows artists to paint down, scale, and reposition vegetation in an art-directed way.

• Frozen 2: combined with BONSAI to create the Enchanted Forest setting. Also seen in the moss, grass, and mulch of the dam.

SWOOP is a wind rig used to combine VFX simulation with animation to adjust size, speed, and path.

• Frozen 2: allowed the animators to animate the wind spirit Gale as if she was a character

A staple of the Disney formula, the “I Want / I Wish” song is a term used to describe a song early in a musical where the lead character sits down on something and sings about what they wants in life, and the audience falls in love with them and then roots for her to get it for the rest of the night. By expressing this desire in a song, it makes the point impossible to miss.

• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: “I’m Wishing / One Song”

• Sleeping Beauty: “I Wonder”

• Cinderella: “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”

• The Little Mermaid: “Part of Your World”

• Beauty and the Beast: “Belle”

• Aladdin: “One Jump Ahead”

• The Lion King: “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King”

• Pocahontas: “Just Around The Riverbend”

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame: “Out There”

• Hercules: “Go the Distance”

• Mulan: “Reflection”

• The Princess and the Frog: “Almost There”

• Tangled: “When Will My Life Begin”

• Frozen: “For the First Time In Forever” & “Let It Go”

• Moana: “How Far I’ll Go”

• Ralph Breaks The Internet: “Slaughter Race”

• Frozen II: “Into the Unknown”

• Encanto: “Waiting on a Miracle”

• Wish: “This Wish”

Another popular Disney staple is the Villain Song where the villain declares their evil intentions via song.

• The Great Mouse Detective: “The World’s Greatest Criminal Mind”

• The Little Mermaid: “Poor Unfortunate Souls”

• Beauty and the Beast: “Gaston”

• The Lion King: “Be Prepared”

• Pocahontas: “Mine, Mine, Mine”

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame: “Hellfire”

• Home on the Range: “Yodel-Adle-Eedle-Idle-Oo”

• The Princess and the Frog: “Friends on the Other Side”

• Tangled: “Mother Knows Best”

• Wish: “This Is The Thanks I Get?”

Notable artists in Walt Disney Animation Studios soundtracks

• The Sherman Brothers

• Alan Menken and Howard Ashman

• Kristen Anderson-Lopez / Bobbie Lopez

• Lin-Manuel Miranda