The Muiltiplane camera: Creating dimension in animation...without a computer
For most of the early days of animation, the art form was seen as a little more than a moving comic strip; a silly character, a funny sight-gag, the end. And for the most part, it was. In the twenties and early thirties, animated characters like Betty Boop, and Feliz the Cat were household names because they would star in an animated short before a feature film. The cartoons were entertaining, and they did tend to stick with the viewer, but they were far from what anybody would call cinematic. The majority of these shorts were a single character singing or dancing in front of a still drawing, it was a very 2D experience. When Walt Disney announced he was working on the first full-length feature animation, he was laughed at. The response balked that animation was not rich in story, character, plot, or cinematic staging, and the critics were right, and Walt knew that. If they were going make make animation a legitimate cinematic art form, then they had t...