I'll probably be spacing these out for one a day, so there's not a bombardment of multiple Disney junkage at once. I watched like six Disney movies this Monday; will probably watch more tomorrow after work. ;) (Although what I really should be doing is getting my butt in gear and finishing off Half Blood Prince already...) So I'm posting some of my thoughts on all the Disney stuff I'm bingeing on currently:



As Disney’s first complete animated movie, Snow White remains a singularly great achievement, at the very least in a technical sense. It was basically the Toy Story of its day, and some of the animation techniques in it are really remarkable. I’m still trying to figure out how they did some of the water effects. Since that was one of the first times the multiplane camera was used, some of the backgrounds were still rather blurry, but was certainly unheard of before that movie.

What I found especially interesting was the way the “human” characters were rendered. Snow White, the Prince and the Queen all had this very subtle, understated movement and expression that made it obvious the characters were taken directly from rotoscoped actors. It’s a technique that wasn’t really used that often any more, and I can see why. It would work well in a certain kind of movie, but juxtaposed against the more charactured dwarves and animals, it’s a little strange.

As annoying as Snow White was (especially certain songs that will go unsung), she was fascinating just in the fact that she was the sort of character that will probably never, ever be tolerated in movies again. She was the completely flawless heroine in that she had no weaknesses except naivete and kindness. That, and she was obviously very domestic and docile. While that sort of heroine simply doesn’t work anymore, it seems like just the sort of thing that was needed during that time period.

While people get annoyed with the cutesy singing animals, there’s a very simple and understandable reason why they’re there: animals are WAY easier to animate than people, especially people that you want to look realistic. Although many of the animators will fully admit that the first forays into the cutesy animals (particularly the deer) were disastrous, they were less of a pain to have onscreen than the more complex human characters. It was also much easier back then to display personality and emotion through the animals. Mostly, I can now see why human characters from then looked so much more…well, animated. In the long run, animation works best when it’s utilizing exaggeration to its fullest.



Half-Blood Prince completion status: Finished reading the first six chapters. Intend to do more tonight...I'm tired of having to tiptoe around Em and Rei's mad theorizing and spoilers! XO

Drawing: Same as yesterday, essentially.

Writing: See above.