If you’re an avid Disney fan – or even just someone who watches a lot of movies and pays attention to detail – it’s probably no secret that Disney’s animators recycle some of their animations into multiple subsequent films.
If the only reason they do that is to save money, it turns out they save alot of money, because as the internet is learning to come to grips with, Disney recycles a ton of entire scenes.
And I’m sorry to say that once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Let’s go!
First, did you know that this sequence from Snow White was entirely repurposed for Robin Hood?
And this animation in Beauty and the Beast hasn’t aged in 30 years!
Anyone think Christopher Robin looks a little bit like young Mowgli??
The process is called rotoscoping, which is sort of like current animators asking the smart kids of the past whether or not they can copy their paper, according to Business Insider.
“It involves animators drawing and tracing over old footage to create anew,” and traces its roots back to Wolfgang “Wollie” Reitherman.
The classic and legendary Disney animator lived by the motto “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and I think we can all agree everything about early Disney films were working.
Another Disney legend, Floyd Norman, claimed that it was actually tougher and cost more to redraw an existing sequence, but that it was also the safe choice, and one Reitherman and others were sure would land with audiences.
That said, there were plenty of animators hankering to draw something besides little boys and dancing princesses, and eventually, they would get to use some of their own creative genius to make new sequences.
Hopefully none of this has ruined your childhood.
I think those people are being a bit dramatic, don’t you? I mean, if anything, it just reinforces how much Disney influenced your childhood – again and again and again.
