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It's worth pointing out that Walt was one of the inventors of this camera, as well as all his other roles in making the company's art. Concepts we have today like Photoshop layers and CSS stacking contexts are direct descendants of this invention.
And there were various predecessors like for example tunnel books: https://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/tunnel-books-art-histor...
Why did they go vertical? Would it have been easier going horizontal?
It's worth pointing out that Walt was one of the inventors of this camera, as well as all his other roles in making the company's art. Concepts we have today like Photoshop layers and CSS stacking contexts are direct descendants of this invention.
Wikipedia's page on the multiplane camera is interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplane_camera
The first incarnation: Lottie Reininger/Carl Koch, 1926. Lottie's "Adventures of Prince Achmed" from the same year is the oldest known surviving animated feature, and can be watched in its entirety on Wikipedia.
Other people fooled around with the idea but there's nothing wiki-notable.
1933: while estranged from Disney (it's a long saga), Walt's former star animator and Mickey co-creator Ub Iwerks built a more advanced one.
1934: the ever-inventive Fleischer studios (inventors of the process of 'rotoscoping', where animators trace over live action) took a very different approach to the problem of creating a sense of depth in animation and built their bugfuck insane Stereoptical Camera, which put miniature sets on a turntable, with a place to put animation cels (which, tangentially, were invented back in 1914 at Bray Studios).
1937: Disney's studio put together a seven-layer multiplane camera for Snow White. Walt's name went on the patent.
(When I was a kid dreaming of being in the animation industry in the seventies, Leonard Maltin's Of Mice and Magic was the canonical history of the entire medium, if you're curious about the minutae of long-vanished studios. It's a lot easier to actually see any old piece of animation that you're curious about than it was back then.)
Why did they go vertical? Would it have been easier going horizontal?
With everything standing up on end you're constantly fighting gravity and air currents, as well as problems like background art painted using water-based media that makes the paper it's on want to wrinkle. Much easier to just squish it all flat with gravity's help.
These are definitely techniques that you take for granted, even moreso now with computer animation. I definitely am impressed now when I see scenes like the opening of Sleeping Beauty as the camera zooms in on the inside of the castle. My wife and kids get confused at this point as to what I'm making such a big deal about.
Speaking of techniques-- I remember that Disney's Snow White being a kind of pastiche of different art styles and physics. The Fleischer Snow White, too, with the rotoscoping of Cab Calloway vs. all the bouncy, stretchy characters (all of which IIRC was done by a single animator). All based on practical constraints, I'm sure, but audiences enjoyed it and it's a valid and striking style. Does anyone still mix clashing…
The Spiderverse movies have characters with clashing styles and frame rates sharing the screen, but perhaps it fails your second test because they come from different in-story universes. The design, art direction and animation are great, both movies are a visual feast
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the Wikipedia page[0] is correct, he's more of a refiner than the inventor, no? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplane_camera
Walt is the named inventor on the patent[0]. I verified this by asking ChatGPT to do some research[1]. [0] https://patentyogi.com/celebrity-patents/celebrity-patent-wa... [1] https://chatgpt.com/share/67cf2195-10dc-8011-bc6b-2ee90bdb0a...
There are countless patents that should never have been granted because prior art existed. This isn't a slam-dunk piece of evidence.