MAKING CARTOONS

Radio Record, Volume X, Issue 9, 11 September 1936, Page 56

MAKING CARTOONS

‘""EJOW are cartoons made?"" This is a question often asked when the humorous cartoons are shown at the pictures, and few people realise the great amount of work that is entailed in the making of these films. ‘ _ Normally a film camera takes sixteen photographs each second, a foot of film being exposed in-that time. When the film is being projected it is shown at the rate at which the exposures were made-and the figures appear to be moving naturally on the screen, Although film cartoons are projected at this rate they cannot be produced as quickly as ordinary film pictures, for what is shown on the screen as 2 living picture is actually a series of drawings made one by one and photographed in their proper order... In a film 400 feet long there: would actually be 6400 pictures photographed. If all these pictures had to be drawn separately and completely it would take an artist several months to complete one film, but this is not the case. > Ye. must ’be remembered that in this type of film the same background is very, often used for a considerable part of the action, and only the characters-perhaps only parts of the characters-move. Let us take the example below, Mickey Mouse conducting. a band. On a sheet of pyralin, a transparent substance with ‘the appearance of -glass, a drawing of

the scene~ is made, -complete with the figure of Mickey minus the arm. that:is to move. Several sheets of: paper the same ‘size.as the pyralin are prepared, and on each-of these the artist draws a. sketch. of

the arm alone, the second © drawing

showing the arm caised a little more than the first, and so Of. The firse sheet of pa-

per is then placed in a frame under the sheet of pyralin The pyralin being transparent, the arm can be seen: plainly as part of the

figure, and the whole is then photographed. .

The first sheet of paper is then removed, and the second takes its place, another photograph being taken. This slow process is repeated time after time until the action moves to another scene. when a fresh background is prepared on another sheet of: pyralin. . Perhaps in the next scene the whole figure is to move about rapidly, in which case a separate figure has to be drawn on each sheet of paper before’ being placed beneath the pytalin to be photographed. ft is not always possible to take advantage of a stationary background in this way, and in that case it is necessary for.a separate drawing to be made of each picture. a long and costly process. ,