The possibilities of animation, thanks to computer technology, are virtually limitless today. But once upon a time, animators were forced to use the minimum means available to them, namely, to draw with their hands on sheets of paper. However, there were still some secrets on how to revive the drawings and make them realistic.
So, in order to draw a girl who fell into the looking glass from the fairy tale “Alice in Wonderland”, the animators of the Walt Disney studio first photographed the real model in each episode, and only then copied all her movements from the photograph. The prototype for the image of Alice was 10-year-old actress Catherine Beaumont.
During the studio work, the girl had to perform acrobatic stunts and filmed with bizarre instruments so that the artists could draw the necessary scenes from these frames. Illustrators drew about 23-24 seconds of animation per week, which is about 500-600 drawings. It is difficult to even imagine the amount of work that the animators of that time had to do in order for a full-length cartoon to be born.
