have a happy summer

main blog of preternaturalvalentine but this has been my main for years since I made gifs a decade ago so it has a special place in my heart 💐 Mary

[seraphrain]

[dailynarnia]

is jake gyllenhaal gay??

why would you ask us, a narnia blog, this

[helloitsbees]

happy pride month to this post specifically

[stellesappho]

the secret kissing of the sun and moon ☀️🌙

[cjowoart]

[sevicia]

[hopeless-eccentric]

(mid-divorce) the american education system never taught me how to cherish a woman

[slunch]

(picking up rat that controls me by my hair) but you. you know how

[youruinedmylifebynotbeingreal]

So who’s the blonde and who’s the catgirl in your relationship?

[capsyst]

In the 80’s as computer animation was on the rise one of the thorniest problems was “how do we get this thing we made on the computer… OFF the computer?” There were a lot of unique solutions, but the one I’m fascinated by most is Disney’s solution of using a plotter.

A plotter acted as sort of a 3D printer but for 2D images. There was a ball point pen that could move up and down, and the paper underneath could be moved in and out. Using CAD based programs you could plot points in 2D space and the plotter would draw the lines between them and even do geometric shapes!

When it came time to do The Great Mouse Detective, the animators at Disney wanted to do more dynamic shots for the climatic battle inside Big Ben. Drawing all those gears and cogs would be a nightmare for the animators, so they experimented with using 3D animation.

But this was still the early 80’s. There was no digital ink and paint program, no way to merge the 2D animated characters with the 3D animated backgrounds digitally. So how did they get the 3D animated backgrounds out of the computer?

By drawing each frame on the plotter.

Every frame was printed out on the plotter, and then xeroxed onto animation cels, and then hand painted like traditional 2D animation cels are.

But why the plotter? If they were gonna have to export every frame anyway, why not use a printer? Well… because printers back then just weren’t very good. A plotter uses points and physically draws the line between them, much like how vector graphics work. It yielded a much smoother and higher fidelity line than if they just printed them out.

This was still a massive undertaking, but it was probably the best solution to getting the dynamic camera moves they wanted out on paper. 2D animation was drawn over top and then both layers of animation cels were filmed frame by frame.

And that’s how you got dynamic shots like this in the mid 80’s! 3D animated backgrounds, printed with a plotter, xeroxed onto animation cels, hand painted, and then re-photographed with the 2D animation on top!

This technique would be the standard way Disney got their 3D animation out of the computer for their 2D films… right up until The Rescuers Down Under which was the first fully digital animated feature. That movie used PIXAR’s proprietary CAPS System (hey that name sounds familiar 😉) to combine everything digitally. But that’ll have to be a story for another time!

[radwolf76]

"drawing all those gears and cogs would be a nightmare for the animators"

Yeah, about that. Seven years prior, this was all drawn by hand:

[capsyst]

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.

[cherylblossom]

RATATOUILLE (2007) EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) ZOOTOPIA 2 (2025)

[southerntinkerbelle]

Give Rebecca sugar an episode and it WILL be about the ability to change and change and keep changing

[brandonlees]

"It's a fairytale, but it's not really just a fairytale. It's a fairytale for adults. There's a satirical edge to it. But what runs through the core of the story of The Princess Bride is true love, which is a fairytale notion, but I believe that at the core of any good relationship between a man and a woman is true love, even in living in a complex society of the 80s where relationships are not easy and they're not simple. If a relationship is going to work and have any kind of longevity, there has to be some core of real, true love there, and I believe those things." — Director Rob Reiner talking about "The Princess Bride" in an interview with CBC in 1987.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE | 1987 REST IN PEACE ROB REINER (March 6, 1947 — December 14, 2025)

[alinaastarkov]

I'm through with playing by the rules of someone else's game

[dozydawn]

Fantasia (1940) concept art from Heritage Auctions.

[djjo-keerys]

I've had so many friends But only one who mattered

[daeneryssansa]

Why are you threatened by anyone different than you? TARZAN (1999)

[carnival-phantasm]

The only thing I miss about Brands on tumblr are those shitass 4 frames gifs they used to make

[ankle-beez]

An all time classic

[carnival-phantasm]

[soulspark]