Este artigo é uma tradução
para o inglês de um outro
publicado em português aos 14.7.2012.
(This article is a translation into English from
another originally written in Portuguese
published on 14.7.2012.)
When
Disney started his career in animation, cartoons were short subject and no more
than simple entertainment in a movie session, among the serials, the news-reels,
and the short comedies.
The
“Disneys” of that time were Otto Messmer (“Felix the Cat”) and the Fleisher
brothers (“Out of Inkwell”, Betty Boop, etc).
 |
| Otto Messmer (1892 – 1983) and Felix the Cat. |
 |
| Max Fleischer (1883–1972) and Bimbo. |
 |
| Dave Fleischer (1894–1979) preparing filming with a 3D background.. |
The
Fleishers were great innovators, developing the rotoscopy and the first
experiments in 3D, sound and color.
What
did Disney to grew to the point to overcome those great pioneers of cartoon was
his desire to transform the cartoon into an art form comparable to feature
movies. Animators before Disney produced funny cartoons, just exploring what
the feature films couldn’t such as defying gravity, giving life to inanimate
things and so on.
Slowly
Disney started to make his screen writers create more than funny situations
with animals. They, the animals, needed to have personality and to be involved
in situations with which the audience could connect emotionally. In other
words, Disney introduced realism into fantasy. In a few years the studio no
longer had space in his films for buildings swinging because the moon was
singing or anything else that was not plausible fantasy.
The
natural evolution of this was the search for the best professionals, the
sectorization in production and the search for technical developments as sound
and colour.
All
this, Messmer and the Fleishers could not or would not to follow. When Mickey
started to talk, he actually spoke, articulating mouth and pronouncing words
what neither Felix of Betty Boop were able to do.
Someone once wrote that the best
of Disney are the short films where he’s not concerned with the tricks of
feature movies.
Possibly, but the facts are that
short films were losing public favour in the 1930’s and Disney saw in it an
opportunity for a further development of his art conceiving a feature movie.
"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" was probably intended to kill the
shorts if World War II did not impose its economic constraints giving to the
short films over a decade of life on the big screen, being so far Disney's
biggest achievement in animation.
You can watch "Woos
Whoopee" (1928) by Otto Messmer & Pat Sullivan here.
You can watch "Koko's Earth Control" (1928) by the
Fleischer Studios here.
