Beauty and the Beast- A major stepping stone in animation

We were sent to go out and research the film 'Beauty and the Beast' due to its amazing animation that aided as a stepping stone in terms of the production of computer aided animation movies. 


I thought I would go about some background research into the production side of the movie, Beauty and the Beast and see long, what problems aroused and what was needed in order to created such a masterpiece of animation. I found that the film took nearly four years to produce with the full time help of over about 600 animators, artists, and technicians. There were over 226,000 individually painted cells and over one million drawings. Over 1,300 backgrounds were created for Beauty and the Beast. This stat truly amazed me. Before I read this information I understood and appreciate the skills and time and effort it takes to create an animation, however, when I came across this information and saw the gastronomical amount of drawings and backgrounds that are used, it truly dawned upon me the ridiculously high expertise and true amazing-ness of animation. I was inspired, shocked, almost overwhelmed to find that a film made and targeted for a young audience was actually a life changing and dramatic step in terms of the expertise and exquisite attention to detail needed within production of animation.



Beauty and the Beast mixed traditional animation and select scenes of computer animation together to create new visuals of grandeur for the audience. The computer animated assisted scene that seemed to capture people's imagination the most was the ballroom scene.


"The ballroom sequence features the first computer-generated colour background to be both animated and fully dimensional," says Jim Hillin, CGI Artistic Supervisor forBeauty and the Beast. "What this means is that the background is literally moving and the animators had to animate to it in much the same way that they worked with the live action composites in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. This gives the advantage of sweeping camera moves and perspectives as well as theatrical lighting that would otherwise be impossible. It introduces live action techniques into the animated world. Here the camera plays a very important role in establishing the mood and helps us to experience what the characters themselves are feeling."Hahn saw the ballroom sequence as a defining moment in the movie.

"The ballroom sequence is the bonding moment of the film when the two main characters finally get together," says Hahn. "For us as filmmakers, the computer offered us a way to get heightened emotions on the screen and more dramatic effects than we could have gotten conventionally. It allowed us to move the camera around and take a look at the room instead of just looking at a flat piece of artwork. Technology as a whole is an extension of our fingers, hands, and minds. Computer graphics let us go beyond what we can currently achieve with pencil and paper or paint and a brush."
Computer artists and technicians worked alongside the layout, art direction, and background teams to achieve the results of the ballroom scene. Even the dimensions of the ballroom played a major role in creating the final look.

• 72-foot high ceilings.
• 184 feet from door-to-door with a width of 126 feet.
• 28 wall window sections.
• A 86 X 126 foot dome with a mural (that was hand painted then applied as a texture map)

But the ballroom wasn't the only extensive use of computer-assisted animation in Beauty and the Beast. The movie's climactic song, "Be Our Guest," also made use of computers. Dancing plates, forks, goblets, bubbles, and the chandelier were created with computers.
"The main purpose of CGI is to build and animate things with the computer that will aid and enhance what is going on with the hand-drawn art," says Hillin. "Our biggest challenge is to incorporate the two things and make it seem as if they belong together. If we get too real or the perspectives are too perfect then it doesn't fit in with the rest of the film."
In the case of Beauty and the Beast both the traditional and computer animated environments melded near flawlessly to create a magical and enchanting environment for millions of people worldwide to enjoy.