The process of Disney’s animation
The storyboard is made and all the directors and animators come together to discuss it,when the decisions have been made then the story board is presented as the final. Once the stoy is laid out the dialogue is recorded this needs to be done first so the animators know what each character says. After the dialogue the animators draw out quick rough sketches of each characters, with no colour or background. Some animated films use 50,000 individual drawings. Then to the inking department where the sketches are copied onto a clear celluloid acetate known as a cell. Sometimes even glass can be used, as in Snow White.Then the animation is processed by photographing certain elements combined.
The Little Mermaid includes many characters and all have interactive scenes. The fictional characters
interact with each other through the cell and paintings plus photographing each process.
The characters use gestures with each other and individually for example, dancing, diving, fighting, singing etc. As it is a water based film, there are a lot of ‘splash’ scenes and water movement scenes that have to include a lot of stop frame motion to create the perfect image.
Story Development
The Little Mermaid was originally planned as part of a Disney production earliest feature films. Clements wrote and presented a two page development of ‘Mermaid’ to the Disney CEO, Jeffrey Katzenberg. From this there was then a meeting to discuss how they would produce and develop the animated film.
The setting of the animation is based under water which required the most special effects animation for a Disney animated feature. The Effects animation supervisor Mark Dindal had estimated that over a million bubbles were made for the film and also other processes and effects such as airbrushing, back lighting, superimposition and little computer animation.
Creation
The creation of The Little Mermaid didn't dome easy for the animators. It took them a good while to create the fictional characters as they constantly kept changing them to make them perfect to fit the storyline.
“Ariel's character also brought a lot of dilemma for Disney artists because they needed to decide whether she was going to be exotic or cute. Amazingly, Ariel's first appearance ended up being very much as that of Alice from "Alice in Wonderland" and she wasn't a red head at first!"
