From: jdunning@chagall.Princeton.EDU (John Alan Dunning)
Subject: Re: Disney's "New Look": How?
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 05:47:10 GMT

In article <1993Jan21.204706.3256@ryn.mro4.dec.com> rivers@mdnite.enet.dec.com writes:
>I'm not sure if I agree with Mr. Cook, but I'd like to throw in my two cents
>about the use of computer generated backgrounds.  I find it distracting when
>the background is more 'real' than the animation.  I will readily admit that he
>ballroom in Beauty and the Beast was fantasic to look at, but it bothers my
>sense of reality, if you will, because the sheer realism of the ballroom made
>the two characters dancing around look excruciatingly like animated cartoons. 
>Of course, they *were*, but in the context of the animated cartoon backgrounds,
>they did not stand out.  In the ballroom, it was distracting.  To me. 
>(obviously)
>
>The same goes for Aladdin's trip through the Cave of Wonders.  Firstly, I
>didn't find the flight on the carpet particularly exciting or 'real' and the
>single color/obviously computer generated tunnels zinging by probably helped
>ruin the intended effect.   The tunnels neither looked fitting for the movie,
>nor particularly like real life cave tunnels (whereas BnB's ballroom at least
>looked like a real life ballroom).  The whole scene fairly screamed to me, "You
>are watching a cartoon, and those are computer-generated tunnels."  I, at
>least, don't wish to be reminded that I'm watching a cartoon when I'm watching
>a cartoon, if that makes any sense.  
>
>Now, the talking Cave of Wonders (the cat), was probably computer generated,
>but looked sufficiently like the rest of the backrounds and the general
>animation that it 'fit'.

The Tiger Head from the Cave of Wonders was indeed computer animated.
An article in the November 1992 issue of Computer Graphics World
discusses some of the techniques used in "Aladdin".  

I'm sure the animators would be glad to hear your opinion of the Tiger
Head, because, as the article states, their main goal was making the
head blend into the dunes from which it takes shape.  Basically they wanted
part of the background to come alive and speak.  But with traditional
animation you can always tell which part of the background is animated,
even before it starts moving.  The static background is richly shaded
and detailed, while the animated portions have flat, solid colors.
It would have been impossible to realistically animate the Tiger Head by
hand, because it's covered with all sorts of subtle sand textures and
shadows.  If even one of the grains of sand didn't move perfectly
between hand-drawn frames, you'd see it jitter.  Making smooth
movements like that is fairly trivial for a computer, however.

The head itself started out as a clay scuplture which was covered with
a grid and scanned into the computer.  A hand animator drew the scene
so that the tiger's mouth was exactly synched to the actor's voice.
Then the computer animator used Alias software on a Silicon Graphics
workstation to adjust the head model so that it precisely conformed to the
hand-drawn frames, in order to make the computer-drawn head also match
the actor's mouth movements.  I've done a lot of work with Alias
recently, and the process of adjusting the thousands of points on the Tiger
Head must have been *excruciating*.  I'm surprised the animator didn't
have a nervous breakdown before he was finished.

All in all, I think the work really paid off.  The Cave of Wonders
sequence was stunning.  But I agree that the magic carpet ride
through the cave was somewhat jolting.  Either the animators should
make the computer-rendered backgrounds flatter or the characters more
detailed, so they fit together better.

John