Research- Sketchy Animation and The Disney Bronze Age

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The style of my film has several inspirations lifted from old children’s book illustrations to the horror films of Dario Argento. The lines are done in a sketchy crosshatched style with colours differentiating the scenes. Not only will this be an easy ground to make un-clean animation for practice but it’s also calling back to a more rough style of animation I have a fond nostalgic connection with.

It goes without saying that my childhood was spent watching a lot of Disney films, not as much the recent ones but rather the films from the late silver age (1950-1967) to the late bronze age (1978-1988)

What I mean by that is the different times relevant to how well Walt Disney studios were doing as well as the films they put out.

For example the golden age (1937-1942) was when the studio was finding its feet and becoming largely popular. This was when they were aiming at a ambitious artistic endeavours for their animated feature films, with the exception of Dumbo (1941)

The silver age was when they were properly refining and forming their own identity in the movie industry with hit after hit, as well as making small artistic variations in their animation and art style. That was until the later half when things started to take an interesting shift.

It was in 1961 with their release of 101 dalmatians we saw a step away from the more cleaner refined lines and soft backgrounds of past films and a more illustrated look to the film, further films continued this trend of illustrative and sketchy style animation, from the sword in the stone to the jungle book. You can quite clearly notice the difference between the sharp line drawn backgrounds of 101 dalmatians to the previous painterly style of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

The style stuck around for the majority of projects after 1966 when Walt Disney himself passed away. This left the studio in confusion of what projects to move onto next as well as a lack of artistic drive and inspiration. This resulted in less films being made during the 70’s/80s. This is where we end up in the Disney Bronze Age, or otherwise called the Disney Dark Age among fans.

However I do want to make a strong case for these films as they seemed to embrace a more hand drawn illustrative style which helped compensate for the time taken and to give a stylistic flair under time constraints and poor working conditions.