Watch This: Disney Re-Uses Their Animation

Ehhh it's not like they skin it or something. They still have to animated every frame. They reference stuff in the archives it happened all the time.

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This has been brought to the attention of the Internet on countless blogs starting years ago.

Also, this is a standard thing in animation. There's no reason to rag on Disney for this.

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I wouldn't calll it lazy. There's a difference between "who the fuck's going to notice" and "shit. We only have X number of weeks left to finish." A lot of those decisions were made to save time and money when there was little of both. I know that the 'Sleeping Beauty' animation used in 'Beauty and the Beast' was because they were working down to the wire. Disney corporate has always been questionable, but Disney animators work their butts off.

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The same kinda thing is done all the time these days in visual FX - like Dicaprio's cold breath from Titanic's is used in Fight Club - but once they're created they can be reused and manipulated over and over again so you wouldn't really notice. FX houses have all their old worked stored and ready to use again whenever possible.

But I think everyone's right, it depends on the budget, time, and manpower. If you can do everything from scratch, you'd do it. But I can understand them having to make things work.

Great compilation.

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well, this explains why my favs of the older Disney movies are The Aristocats and Robin Hood.

I think this is funny, mostly because the voice of Little John and Baloo are the same person.

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Disney used a lot of real actors for the dancing and quick moving. They filmed real people and then using a technique called rotoscoping, traced the real people to give life like movement. I can see them reusing the original footage of real actors because it had already been shot.

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I would be highly surprised if there isn't some matching live footage of those sequences from some older property laying around in the Disney Vaults somewhere. Probably the source of all those Dupes.

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Yes its pretty standard stuff for animation, but it also points to Robin Hood and the Aristocrats being pretty much sellotaped together from other disney movies. Sure they were reanimated, but they stole half the characters from the Jungle Book - even got the same actors back to voice them. Both films stink of creative laziness, they were the first major animations made by the studio after Walt Disneys death 1967, and signalled a big drop in quality that was only really turned around with the little mermaid in 1989.

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Cinematical, it didn't seem to me like you were attacking Disney for this one. Everybody else is rushing to Disney's defense, but I don't think theres anything to defend. Of course they do it to save time and money when they're short on both. I think its just a cool video pointing out the exact scenes they used it in, but its not like anyone is advocating the burning of old Disney movies. I just thought the video was cool.

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One that I noticed from when I was a kid is between Jungle Book and Sword in the Stone. In Jungle Book, Mowgli returns to the wolf den, 2 wolves jump on him and lick his face. Mowgli wipes the wolf slobber off, grinning. The same thing happens in Sword in the Stone, except it's the Wart and 2 huge dogs.

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Sword in the Stone is particularly bad as it steals the same animations from itself! Notably when Kay falls over a log at the beginning of the film and then falls over something else later on. It uses the exact same animation and sound "why, I ought to..."

I think you can safely call this Disney's budget period! :)

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Matthew,

With the popularity of digital databases, self-plagiarism is becoming more widely accepted. While most people don't see a problem with it, (I don't) it is still good to make sure you note that you are referencing your previous work when you use parts of it for later projects. Technically speaking, people plaigiarize all the time.

I don't know enough about animating to say whether or not this practice is in good taste, but I have friends who are animators-- and I'd love to give them a break whenever possible. They do work very hard, as was noted above. Interesting article, though.

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Serously, who cares? When I was younger I never noticed so why make a big deal out of it for kids growing up in these times?
Isn't there alot more to worry about than what Disney has been doing or has done in their cartoons???
lol @ video...

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OK, so I'll be the first to actually attack Disney.

Stuff like this is only doable because the films are made primarily for children. Discerning adults would definitely notice if scripts, action sequences or plotlines were this blatantly copied, at least without being given the proper credit (i.e., sequels and remakes).

The kid in me feels somewhat robbed, now knowing that some of the best creative minds in the industry were anything but. Of course, I completely understand why things like this would have been done, considering time, money and resources, but if it's as acceptable as you all make it out to be, let's see some modern-day examples.

And don't give me the "land of no new ideas" spiel. Truthfully, EVERYTHING has been done before in some capacity; this is a step above that. This is straight-up cloning...

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Besides all the possible explanations provided here, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the animators did some of this on purpose, just to see if people noticed.

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I'd guess it's a simple matter of saving money. Besides, when has Disney ever been about originality? Their biggest animated features always "borrow" from classic fairy tales in the public domain-namely, stuff they don't have to pay anyone for. It's all about the bottom line for DisneyCo.

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For the record, Beauty and the Beast was never trying to hide the fact that its final dance was an homage to Sleeping Beauty. This was explicitly stated in several places. Other than that, yeah, Disney's quality took a serious downturn after Walt's death.

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this doesn't really bug me at all so I don't see what the big deal is. its actually kind of fun so thanks for the information. These sequences are just silly or emotionally good fun so they don't really get old. Plus Disney uses a lot of the same story and character elements because its their trademark. The filmmakers on the DVD commentary for Beauty and the Beast even said that they copied the ending sequence from Sleeping Beauty because they were running out of time and money in an otherwise classic and original film so no biggie.

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