THE ADVANTAGES and possibilities of the animation technique were pretty widely recognized in commercial film work long before the Disney era. The value of this treatment in demonstrating processes and principles, in achieving a light-hearted comedy cartoon sequence and in the vast field of education has been ably represented in the animated of films of General Motors, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company and recently in a Technicolor release for Bristol-Myers Company entitled Boy Meets Dog, a noteworthy commercial subject.
[…]
In his article for Nancy Naumburg's "We Make the Movies," Walt Disney says of the animated cartoon technique:
"The world of the animated cartoon is the world of our imagination, a world in which the sun and the moon and the stars and every living thing obey our commands. We pluck a little character from our imagination, and if he becomes disobedient we liquidate him with an eraser. No dictator has power half so absolute. Our materials are anything which the brain can imagine and the hand can draw - all human experience: the real world and dream worlds, color, music, sound, and above all. motion. A fascinating business, but to explain it we must talk of registering pins and exposure sheets, frames and layouts, basic tempos and sweatbox sessions, acoustical beats and audio-frequency oscillators. It is all very technical and confusing to a layman. Often we spend an afternoon showing visitors how cartoons are made, and at the end they timidly inquire, 'But what makes the little drawings move?'
[…]