I had a feeling someone was gonna bring this up, and I debated talking about it in the original post. But I decided against that because as much as I absolutely adore Castle of Cagliostro the actual animation behind it in comparison to what Disney wanted to do with Great Mouse Detective is so vastly different I felt it would detract from the point of the post. But since where here now let’s get into it 😃
The key differences between the two are camera movement and shifting perspective. In Cagliostro the backgrounds remain static 2D, meaning the animators aren’t trying to redraw every frame with a moving shifting perspective. They aren’t doing the sweeping dynamic camera moves Disney wanted for Great Mouse Detective. That reduces a lot of the work load on Cagliostro because they only need to animate the gears on 3-4 frame loops per scene.
Disney wanted more dynamic movement, where the camera could sweep in and around the scene. That places a HUGE amount of work on the animators to ensure that everything is being drawn in perspective while it’s moving. I can’t even begin to think about how much work and effort would’ve had to go into this sequence if it was done entirely by hand. It would’ve been a nightmare!
Please don’t get me wrong. I absolutely LOVE Castle of Cagliostro. It’s an amazing movie, especially knowing its history and the crunch they were under to get it made in such a short time. But it’s not exactly a 1:1 skill check comparison. Cagliostro used the fact the camera wasn’t moving much to reduce the work load and relied heavily on looping animation.
But if you’re looking for a 1:1 comparison skill check I’ve got you covered!
See, the purpose of this post was to talk about how the computer was making it easier on animators by not making them have to draw every frame in perfect perspective. If you wanted a comparable skill check then I would instead suggest comparing the clock tower sequence in Great Mouse Detective to the airplanes in Porco Rosso.
Every single shot of the planes in that film was done by hand. Miyazaki famously refused to use CGI for the longest time on any of his films. If Porco Rosso had been animated by anyone else, those planes would’ve been CGI planes. So every shot, every dogfight, every moment of these planes flying around and turning slowly in perspective was done meticulously by hand, and it looks absolutely AMAZING! That’s a technical marvel in and of itself!
Oh and if you want more examples of animators being absolutely INSANE and doing everything by hand, I strongly recommend the works of Richard Williams. Not only was he instrumental in making Who Framed Roger Rabbit look so convincing, he’s also the insane artist who animated things like this:
You wanna talk insane skills? How about animating every single card in a deck of cards as they fly about the screen? The guy was a technical perfectionist!
I get wanting to compare the clock tower sequence from The Castle of Cagliostro to the Big Ben sequence in the Great Mouse Detective. Story wise they are doing very similar things: having the hero fight the villain on giant moving gears. But the execution of how that was achieved is so VASTLY different it’s really not fair comparing them at all on a technical level. And I hope me pointing that out doesn’t make anyone think I’m being dismissive of Cagliostro either.
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