THE ANIMATED CARTOON
AsWe'll study two early examples of animated cartoons. The first is Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). The second is Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie (Ub Iwerks, 1928), which introduced a little mouse named Mickey.
You can compare animation in both films. Animation involves, in theory, twenty-four sequential drawings for each second of film.
I write "in theory" because there's such a thing as "selective animation," where fewer drawings are used each second and only parts of the body (the mouth, etc.) are animated. This less expensive animation is often used for television.
Later "cel animation" replaced single-drawing animation. That is, each part of the cartoon figure's body was drawn on transparent "cels," placed on top of each other, so the entire figure did not need to be redrawn for each new frame, but only the part that moved. This was even more important for backgrounds, since the background did not need to be drawn each time.
For now, let's compare McCay's film with Disney's. McCay's cartoon has nothing of expressive value. It's a visual gimmick, with a limited number of ideas and a limited sense of character; moreover, the artist lingers too long on each moment. (This is not to discredit the film, since it was innovative at the time.)
Disney (with Iwerks), on the other hand, shows a constant flow of invention, not to mention an adept blend of sound and image, of which Disney was also a master, as his later feature-length cartoons (Snow White, Dumbo, Pinocchio, etc.) showed. In fact, the trade term, "Mickey Mousing" comes from Disney's use of synchronized sound effects (or music) and image.
(For example, if a character falls, the music "tells" the moment with a percussive sound. This kind of Mickey Mousing of sound and image, as if the sound were commenting on the image, was also used for live-action films, with less artistic effect, since the matching of music and image seemed simple-minded.)
Visually, Disney never wastes a frame without advancing character, story, or variation of ideas. In Steamboat Willie, for example, Mickey accents the music with each turn of the wheel.
Or notice the theme and variation method Disney uses so well; in this case, the third steamboat whistles pipes an unexpected sound. Disney brought this variation technique to perfection in his early masterpiece, Three Little Pigs (1933), which won him one of many Oscars.
Notice also the use of offscreen space, as the feline villain enters early in the cartoon from screen right, an example of framing for dramatic effect. Other examples of visual effect include at least one close-up and a long shot showing the arrival of the train. Probably the most effective, however, is the discovery pan, after Mickey takes a concert bow and "discovers" the cat, screen right (see attached file).
Invention of ideas includes Mickey's elongated suspenders; the villain kicking himself; Mickey's fall into the water basin; more variation technqiue with the cat's spitting tobacco juice twice (the first time it hits the bell, which rings; the second time it hits him in the face); the winding up of the goat to expel the sheet music of "Turkey in the Straw"; and Mickey's jig dance to that tune, with Mickey as a one-man percussion band (pans, garbage pail, duck, piglets, bull's teeth and tongue, etc.).
Note that Mickey already has a well-developed character (though still without his trademark white gloves): the middle-class mouse fighting for his ordinary dignity against the humiliations of social life. Note also how Disney develops visual and sound motifs in this early sound cartoon: the laughter and the singing:
We first see Mickey whistling; then we see him playing various percussive instruments, still making music. In fact, this early sound short is a variation on different sounds of music, laughter, and animal calls.
These motifs are developed in the cat character too, who laughs when his spat tobacco juice rebounds and hits the bell only to find the juice has the last laugh. This idea of the last laugh concludes the film, with Mickey laughing at the parrot, who had laughed at him.
In terms of variation, and development, of visual motifs; the presentation of character; the unity of effect (motifs of music and laughter); and especially the synchronized blend of music, sound effects, and image, this early Mickey Mouse cartoon was an important contribution not only to cartoons, but even to live-action films.
Of course, Disney's later innovations would reach even higher artistic levels, almost beyond imagination at the time (Snow White was nicknamed "Disney's Folly," since no-one believed a feature-length cartoon could succeed). But Steamboat Willie was a token of what was to come.
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