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Just to give a little more depth to Walt as a hardware hacker. He invented and patented the multiplane camera. http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT2201689 h
by froo 18y ago
Just to give a little more depth to Walt as a hardware hacker. He invented and patented the multiplane camera.
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT2201689 http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT2201689
This gave the Disney films much of their richness that other studios could not match.. unfortunately the Disney studio stopped using this technology after Walt's death in 66 because of expense... and it showed.
He was also an innovator and is responsible for the technique known as "rolling" whereby the animators disk was actually turned upside down so that animators could roll through the drawings instead of flip through them as was customary at the time.
Example of the technique linked below
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFFq_-XCfq4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFFq_-XCfq4
This helped with the inbetweening process because an animator could quickly flip back and forth through the movements of a character, or even through every X frames of a character to judge it's movements more precisely, which made the Disney films look more realistic.
He also innovated by spending lots of resources on research, with the studio coming up with the "12 principles of animation" which are still relevant, even today. They had this stuff figured out in the 30's
He was also a fan of iteration and always expected more from his animators. For example, did you know that Dopey from Snow White, Jiminy Cricket from Pinnochio and Thumper from Bambi were not in the original scripts for those films? They are among the most popular characters from those classic films.
I could go on and on about many of the things that he did and many of the values he held which you would find in many of the great CEO's, eg Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.
Needless to say, Walt was a hacker in every sense of the word. Nothing was unachievable in his mind.
- replicatorblog 18y agoFroo, you are absolutely right. He was also very involved in the audio animatronics for Disneyworld creating the robotic Abe Lincoln driven by magnetic tape. and the multi-plane camera was an amazing invention for its time (the shots still hold up too). I was just surprised about the trains because even with those inventions you mentioned he was the "idea" man and the quality control czar. With the trains he was actually turning the handle on the mill. Great comments, and thanks for the links!
- froo 18y agohe was the "idea" man and the quality control czar Not to mention the taskmaster. Disneyland was built in a year from groundbreaking to opening day. There is a quote I've read (which I'm essentially paraphrasing now because I can't find the exact quote) where a journalist asked Walt how they managed to construct Disneyland in 365 days. Walt simply replied "We worked all of them"
- replicatorblog 18y agoI'm just reading a book now called "Realityland" which is the story of how Disney World and Epcot were built after Walt's death. Kind of sad to see how far from the original vision Epcot is. Walt had some pretty interesting ideas on urban planning that prefigured modern schools of architecture like "New Urbanism" http://www.newurbanism.org/ http://www.newurbanism.org/ If you are a Disney fan, Realityland is well worth a look.
- froo 18y agoI am definitely an early Disney film fan (from an animation perspective). Another book you might read is actually written by two of Disney's "Nine Old Men" called "The Illusion of Life" (Pixar actually did an homage to them in The Incredibles) and it talks about not only the specific techniques that they created, but also the attitude of the studio in the early days. It's actually interesting to read the history on something like Apple and also Disney and see the many similarities between the two companies in their early days. Early Disney was definitely a startup that had a lot of the hacker values. Walt was definitely on another plane of thinking. My favourite quote of his is: “I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination” - Walt Disney
- replicatorblog 18y agoVery cool, is the homage your referring to when there are the two old men talking and say something like "Thats the way you do it, old school" and the other says "No school like the old school." I always wondered why they were in that scene, but that would explain it.