• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.33
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• pp.31-53
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• 2013

In the early twentieth century, history of animation began by modern artists, they produced various experimental images with the newly invented film and cameras. Artists in the field of movie, photography, paintings and others manipulated images in motion. But as some animated movies won industrial success and popularity, they became the trend but experimental style of early animation preserved by so-called non-mainstreamers or experimental animators, counteracting commercialism. Disney animation also followed the trend by applying realistic Hollywood film style, the worse critics placed a low value on the animation and it tarnished the image, although it was profitable investment from a business standpoint. To make images realistic, they opened a drawing class that animators developed skills to imitate motions and forms from subjects in real life. Also some techniques and gizmos were used to mimic and simulate three dimensional objects and spaces, multiplane camera and compositing 3D CG images with 2D drawings. Moreover, they brought animation stories from fairly tales or folk tales, and Walt's personal interest in live-action movies, they applied Hollywood-film-like narratives and realistic visual, and harsh criticism ensued. On the surface early disney animations' potential seems to be weakened, but in reality it still exists by simplifying and exaggerating forms and color as modern arts. Disney animation employs concepts of the modernism paintings such as simplified shapes and colors to a character design, when their characters are placed together in a scene, that visual elements cause mental reaction. This modification gives a new internal experience to audiences. As conceptual colors in abstract paintings make images appeared to be flat, coloring characters with no shading make them look flat and comparing to them, background images are also appeared to be flat. On top of that, multi-perspective at background images recalls modernist paintings. This essay goes in details with the animation pioneers' works and how Disney animation developed its techniques to emulate real life and analyses color schemes, forms, and spaces in Disney animation compared with modern artists' works, in that the visual language of Disney animation reminds of impression from abstract paintings in the beginning of the twentieth centuries.