Disney's unlimited self-plagiarism

[synthsin75]

Not all of those were new characters. The bears and elephant at the beginning were very obviously only minor color and wardrobe changes to the exact same animation.

I think, at the very least, we have to admit that these segments weren't done by the master animators of Disney (like we'd have expected). Any off-the-street tweener could have easily done many of these segments. Granted it would still have been time consuming work. But the needed level of skill is what is most deceptive.

I guess I'd have to say that I'm just more disappointed with the fact they never admitted this than I am it was done.

It's kind of like the optic tricks classic artists use to use. They use to "project" the image onto the actual canvas. This is why many subjects during the period became left-handed. Luckily, the assumption they did it just by sight has probably inspired the development of artists who could do it by sight, but it still colors my opinion of those masters.

The difference is that this Disney trick didn't inspire anything but more work for those who didn't know and tried to emulate it.

[mkelley]

I guess I'd have to say that I'm just more disappointed with the fact they never admitted this than I am it was done.

Never admitted it? It sounds like they were on trial or something.

The classic Disney animation book, "Illusion of Life", was written by two of the "nine old men" who most likely did NOT do this. Nor were they writing about that era of animation (for the most part it was pre-70"s features they talked about -- while the book was "updated" for other releases it wasn't revised in any large portion).

Disney certainly "admitted" to using rotoscoping, to xeroxing cells (which they "admitted" was a cost cutting measure), to using "non-artists" for inkers and tweeners, in short, doing whatever it took to create the work. I don't recall any particular article or book written by any of the Disney animators who took a high and mighty tone about getting the work out.

I'm not surprised the people who don't know much about animation are shocked by this -- but anyone who has made a penny with their art work certainly shouldn't be (hey, I hate to break this to anyone this late in life, but those ships in the original Star Wars? They were just models made out of plastic parts from other model kits, and not very convincing ones at that if you got within two feet of them. And, what's worse, Lucas used the same shot of the X-Wing fighter getting destroyed over and over again! There, now I've let the cat out of the bag).

[synthsin75]

Never admitted it? It sounds like they were on trial or something.

Nah. It's just that all of those "Wonderful world of Disney" presentations I remember seeing as a kid, that showed some of how it was made, never even hinted at anything like this. They always led a kid to believe that master animators were behind the whole work.

Granted now days I understand about grunt tweening work and such, but after a childhood full of "Disney propaganda" , it's a little hard to swallow.

[Farbklecks]

Well, this isn't new for me.
I have seen Winnie the Pooh, there where some scenes in the musical number of "heathalumps and weasels", (correct written?), which did remind me to one or two other Disney movies. I think it was Dumbo and the Jungle Book. (Hm, hasn't the Jungle Book also some scenes of Dumbo?)

If they want to create a mosaic piece of different scenes and put it together to a new one...
Why not. Disney is a commercial company, and if they work economical...
The result does count, and the examples are from the time when Disney had a lot of problems. (except Beauty and the Beast, but who cares? The prince has his girl, the girl has her prince, so what? )

[heyvern]

You guys are making excuses for a billion dollar corporation that reused their own animation.

You are confusing "tracing" you OWN drawings DURING the design process with tracing some one else's work that has long since been done and presented. If they wanted show Jungle Book just release Jungle Book again.

The Xeroxing of the drawings was to save time on CLEANUP of the line work and for transferring to the cells for painting and shooting. It had nothing to do with reusing pre existing animation. I've already read about that technique. I remember the first few films they used it with and even reviewers commented that the line work didn't look as "clean" as earlier Disney works.

As for "web templates"... I've been asked on many occasions...

"You don't use templates right? This isn't going to be the same layout as another site with different colors and images right? We want an original web site."

I don't know what inspires that question but I can guess.

Also a web site navigation system is not a good comparison to this type of "reuse". A navigation system is comparable to the plot line of a story with a beginning middle and end. It is used to TRAVEL and ACCESS the content. The navigation is NOT the content. There are only so many ways to navigate within a web site.

There are UNLIMITED ways to animate a dance sequence between a tall bear and another very short character. Unlimited. Like... infinity. You can't do it the same twice by accident... unless you trace it.


-vern

[Mikdog]

I don't mind if they redid some of the newer stuff by using the same poses and timings of older stuff, which is CLEARLY evident in the YouTube video. Hey, it worked and probably took the original guy a loooong time to figure out the routines in the first place, so to save time and money they just reused the same formulas. I don't mind. S'all good. Its like, if you figure out how to make a character walk, you're going to base that same walk on your next character. Right?

[realsnake]

I dunno bout disney, but as far as i remember my favorite Japanese Manga Red Hawk(1995) had an entire scene rotoscoped step by step from another of my favorite Japanese Anime Street Fighter the movie(the fight between Sagat, Ryu and the fight between Redhawk and giant)

[Farbklecks]

And outside animation...
I've got a DVD, in english, original, an action movie, yeah.
Maybe a Z-movie, - some guys make a break-in, and there's a lot of shooting, Kablamm in the building, Kawoom outside the building, and that's very impressing...
And the camera takes a short view of the company sign outside the building.
And there it is: CYBERDINE.
These §$%# did take the whole action footages from Terminator 2!!!
(without Arnie)

So I am not really surprised what Disney does.
And they draw it new, allright: dancing, moving, some action, but they have to to draw it new.


I hope they watch Youtube, he he he, and the result will be: they call a lawyer because of copyright reasons.

And the Budget CD company, I create the cover for, always re-publish old material.
A new cover and the music inside is from some stuff which is 1 or 2 years old.
Welcome to life.

[bleep]

[chucky]

You know what guys, I take it back.
I had actually spoken without watching the clip.
I had no idea of the extent of this self plagiarism , holy lack of creativity, batman!
I have never been a fan of Disney acting and I think the worst aspect of this Disney copy cat factor is that the clips (except the jungle book which is pretty cool) ARE SO LAME.
LAME LAME LAME.
Anyway almost all those who work in the animation industry will be forced to pose out characters in a similar way at some point. Yeeech.

[dm]

Mr. Disney passed away in 1966. After that event, the whole place had to continue on without 'vision'. Things changed. Actually, things started changing when Mr. Disney got less involved in the animation, but more so after his death. When he was alive, it wasn't a multi-national mega-corporation. Sure, same name, but different management. The new management eventually discontinued 2D animation entirely.

I have no doubt that the same management model affected the animation department, and they had to continue on producing the junk that came about in their time.

So people who spend hours on perfecting walk cycles, and 'emulating' their favorite anime are complaining about this? How far is too far? Why does it even matter? I guess it's just an excuse to talk. Anything will do.

And yet, it's still important enough for some folks to 'get up in arms' about, isn't it?

[heyvern]

Okay I'm willing to admit that reuse of content is acceptable in some situations. Good grief I'm the one writing that set of scripts that permits reusue of animated bone animation for AS files. Saving and reusing animated sequences. Why should I be so outraged?

I'm expressing disappointment over the fact that Disney has an "image" of originality and quality. This image was based on the hard work of the animators over many years. They won awards. People hold them up as a standard.

What gets me up in arms is when that image of quality and expertise is based on "not doing the work".

Why do studios use less skilled artists to draw inbetweens? Why are animated series sent to other countries to be produced? Because it is the KEY FRAMES of hand drawn animation that are the real hard work. it is creating that motion and acting that takes tremendous skill and talent.

It is the original "line" or pencil work that is the HARD part of animation. Tracing someone elses work takes time and some talent but it is what happened before those lines got on the paper that truly takes talent.

Anyone with modest skills can trace over someone else's work, change it slightly, fill it in with different colors and say "I did this! This is an original animation!". By putting those animations in NEW movies that is what Disney did. Hoping no one would notice or care (obviously no one did or does).

The very same people saying my outrage is "unfounded" would be screaming bloody murder if someone stole THEIR animation and traced over it. You would be furious. You would hire lawyers.

In the Disney case there is no infringement. No laws broken. But... it is the EXACT same type of "copying" as copying from something you don't own. The artists who created the original animations I am sure did not steal from themselves. Those artists weren't involved. It was some executive or some director who said..

"Save some time here, let's just steal that song and dance number from Jungle Book. The idiots who watch our films will never know."

What if one of the animators involved with those scenes used that movie as part of his or her resume? Would that be fair to someone who actually did the work themselves?
-vern

[TheChewanater]

The very same people saying my outrage is "unfounded" would be screaming bloody murder if someone stole THEIR animation and traced over it. You would be furious. You would hire lawyers.

I wouldn't, but that's because I just make short animations on Youtube for the lulz. Disney actually sold this stuff. People paid to watch essentially the same thing. I mean, it's not like they actually paid to watch the stories.

[dm]

I'm expressing disappointment over the fact that Disney has an "image" of originality and quality. This image was based on the hard work of the animators over many years. They won awards. People hold them up as a standard.

Sadly, that's 'advertising', based on something that went awry over 40 years ago. Though compared to the 'competition', they did tend to still be 'better' quality, even though everyone's quality generally went down. You're just buying a brand name with most of Disney product in those years. Some of it was pretty bad product too.

Directing animators on Robin Hood, as well as Jungle Book-were all pretty much the same people. They were essentially ripping themselves off (or reusing their own stuff)-This applies to other films used in that comparative analysis as well. Kinda' lame, huh? Reitherman, Johnston, Thomas, Lounsbery, Kahl [etc.]. I think Reitherman was director on most of the later years (post Walt days). He's probably to credit/blame for most of this.

If there isn't somebody sort of high up who cares about the quality of the product, it's going to suffer. That's all that happened-no body knew what they were doing, so they tried to repeat what worked in the past. What do you suppose Pixar would be without Steve Jobs and John Lasseter (though to a lesser extent)? Disney became a corporation run by people who run corporations. They could as easily sell machine screws as entertainment.

Brand loyalty is a little strange. I know people who are Dodge people, because their parents were Dodge people in the 50's and 60's. No doubt, the children of the folks here will grow up to be Anime Studio people-as will their kids, right? I suppose it makes life simpler. If the product maintains quality and innovation, that's great. If not, then it's too bad, and people should have the sense to move on. Ah, but then the brand loyalty kicks in, doesn't it? Silly people. Disappointment, confusion, and feelings of betrayal kick in when the brand doesn't live up to the dream you've bought into, huh? I guess you marry a brand, for better or worse. Divorce can be very difficult. I guess I do understand, after all.

[Vilma]

Interesting video and very interesting conversation.

I do feel sad to see the amount of reused animation although I'm not shocked. What makes me so sad about this is the obvious lack of originality and vision - they died with Walt.

I agree with both sides - while it's acceptable to use old material and reuse poses and animations with only changes to appearance - it's not ok (in my mind) to to plan the animation with reuse in mind. And to be frank - in Disney's case the reuse must have been planned even before the the script was ready. This makes me a bit angry. Making this kind of use of old animation tracks is intentional - you can't just pop in an old sequence without a careful planning. There's music to be composed, timing and pace of the story must be thought of before putting IT there. It does take time to plan these things - it's not easy - but it's cost-effective.

I guess every field of creative business is guilty for lack of originality these days. And it's a good thing to recognise this as it leaves us wonder about the source of original ideas.