Traditional animation

The model sheets will often include "turnarounds" which show how a character or object looks in three-dimensions along with standardized special poses and expressions so that the artists have a guide to refer to.

An exposure sheet (or X-sheet) is created; this is a printed table that breaks down the action, dialogue, and sound frame-by-frame as a guide for the animators.

The layout drawings and storyboards are then spliced, along with the audio and an animatic is formed (not to be confused with its predecessor, the leica reel).

Each drawing is transferred from paper to a thin, clear sheet of plastic called a cel, a contraction of the material name celluloid.

When peacetime resumed, much of the original equipment went to waste as more economic solutions were sought, leading to the xerography process pioneered by Ub Iwerks.

The current process, termed "digital ink and paint", is the same as traditional ink and paint until after the animation drawings are completed;[8] instead of being transferred to cels, the animators' drawings are either scanned into a computer or drawn directly onto a computer monitor via graphics tablets, where they are colored and processed using one or more of a variety of software packages.

In addition to a cost savings compared to traditional cel painting of 5 to 1, the Hanna-Barbera system also allowed for multiplane camera effects evident in H-B productions such as A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (1988).

[11] The computer files for these projects were not archived and the shows themselves were printed to videotape, making remastering difficult due to their lack of high resolution.

The CAPS system allowed the Disney artists to make use of colored ink-line techniques mostly lost during the xerography era, as well as multiplane effects, blended shading, and easier integration with 3D CGI backgrounds (as in the ballroom sequence in the 1991 film Beauty and the Beast), props, and characters.

Prior to this, the series adopted digital animation solely for its opening credits in 2009, but retained the use of traditional cels for the main content of each episode.

In very early cartoons made before the use of the cel, such as Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), the entire frame, including the background and all characters and items, were drawn on a single sheet of paper, then photographed.

[22] A frame was made by removing all the blank parts of the papers where the objects were drawn before being placed on top of the backgrounds and finally photographed.

The end result does not look very lifelike, but is inexpensive to produce, and therefore allows cartoons to be made on small television budgets.

However, when a character is required to perform a quick movement, it is usually necessary to revert to animating "on ones", as "twos" are too slow to convey the motion adequately.

Ryan Larkin's 1969 Academy Award-nominated National Film Board of Canada short Walking makes creative use of loops.

In addition, a promotional music video from Cartoon Network's Groovies featuring the Soul Coughing song "Circles" poked fun at animation loops as they are often seen in The Flintstones, in which Fred and Barney (along with various Hanna-Barbera characters that aired on Cartoon Network), supposedly walking in a house, wonder why they keep passing the same table and vase over and over again.

This device, originally designed by former Walt Disney Studios animator/director Ub Iwerks, is a vertical, top-down camera crane that shot scenes painted on multiple, individually adjustable glass planes.

[36] This provided a depth and fullness to the scene that was closer in resemblance to real life, which was a prominent goal for many animation studios at the time.

[37] This saved time and money, and it also made it possible to put in more details and to control the size of the xeroxed objects and characters.

Disney animator and engineer Bill Justice had patented a forerunner of the Xerox process in 1944, where drawings made with a special pencil would be transferred to a cel by pressure, and then fixing it.

[38] The xerographic method was first tested by Disney in a few scenes of Sleeping Beauty and was first fully used in the short film Goliath II, while the first feature entirely using this process was One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).

In most cases, rotoscoping is mainly used to aid the animation of realistically rendered human beings, as in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, and Sleeping Beauty.

A method related to conventional rotoscoping was later invented for the animation of solid inanimate objects, such as cars, boats, or doors.

Related to rotoscoping are the methods of vectorizing live-action footage, in order to achieve a very graphical look, like in Richard Linklater's film A Scanner Darkly.

Like rotoscoping, this method is rarely used, but when it is, it can be done to terrific effect, immersing the audience in a fantasy world where humans and cartoons co-exist.

Live-action and animation were later combined in features such as Song of the South (1946), The Incredible Mr. Limpet, Mary Poppins (both in 1964), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Cool World (1992), Space Jam (1996), Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003), The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (2004), and Enchanted (2007), among many others.

[40] The drawings are composited in a computer program on many transparent "layers" much the same way as they are with cels,[41] and made into a sequence of images which may then be transferred onto film or converted to a digital video format.

[43] Additionally, video cameras give the opportunity to see a "preview" of the scenes and how they will look when finished, enabling the animators to correct and improve upon them without having to complete them first.

[44] Usage of the multiplane camera or similar devices declined due to production costs and the rise of digital animation.

Beginning largely with the use of CAPS, digital multiplane cameras would help streamline the process of adding layers and depth to animated scenes.