On October 1, 1934, the Ub Iwerks Studios released an innovative - TopicsExpress



          

On October 1, 1934, the Ub Iwerks Studios released an innovative new cartoon,The Headless Horseman based on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” By this time, Ub had stopped animating and Grim Natwick (creator of Betty Boop and lead animator of Snow White) led animation at the Iwerks Studios. Instead of animating, Ub would go down into the basement of the studio and start tinkering. With spare parts from an old Chevrolet automobile, Ub created the first horizontal multiplane camera that used four layers of flat artwork. The multiplane camera allows layers of artwork to animate past the camera at various speeds and distances from one another to help create a three-dimensional effect. The Iwerks Studios started using the multiplane camera for the Willie Whopper series and ComiColor cartoons in the mid 1930’s. Later, the Disney Studios would begin using Ub’s creation, the multiplane camera. In 1938, the Disney Studios won an Academy Award in a scientific and technical category for their creation of the multiplane camera while The Old Mill won an Oscar for best cartoon short subject. The most famous multiplane camera was used in the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and changed from horizontal to vertical and was used on almost every Disney animated film until the invention of CAPS (Computer Animation Production System). CAPS was used from 1989 to 2006 in such films as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, to name a few. My uncle, Don Iwerks, followed in his father’s footsteps as a tinkerer and innovator and ran the Disney Studios machine shop for 35 years before opening Iwerks Entertainment with co-founder Stan Kinsey. Since my Uncle Don was an expert on camera systems, he was approached by Diane Disney to help rebuild some of these historic pieces for The Walt Disney Family Museum, which houses one of two remaining multiplane camera systems. The other lives in The Frank G. Wells building on the Disney Studio lot in Burbank, California.
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 17:55:07 +0000

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