How do they make those animated movie cartoons of Mickey Mouse and his animal relatives which have proved so popular? In this article the author explains the tedious process by which cartoons are brought to life.
The next time you drop into your favorite theater and watch Mickey Mouse, Oswald the Rabbit, Krazy Kat, or any of their familiar cartooned brethren scamper across the screen in a series of animated musical episodes, stop and ponder for a moment on these weighty facts:
No less than 10,000 drawings, tediously made by hand, went into the production of your 20 minutes' entertainment. Approximately 2,000 feet of film was required to reel off the cartooned adventures—and one cameraman, working steadily, can turn out only 50 feet of cartoon recordings in one day. A skilled orchestra, watching the cartoon unreel before their eyes, produced the sound effects not once, but twice, so that the best sound "take" could be chosen for the finished film.
The animated cartoon, in its present form, stands as a monument to the ingenuity of the several men engaged in the creation of these sound novelties. There are two principal cartoon studios in Hollywood today. Walt Disney, with his "Silly Symphonies" and his "Mickey Mouse" series, and Messrs. Lantz and Nolan, with their "Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit" series, are totally responsible for six cartoons per month.
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