Disney's Recycled Animation
Have you ever had to do a double take while watching a Disney animated film? Perhaps a deja vu feeling? I know I did when I watched Robin Hood and saw Little John and thought he looked awfully familiar… maybe like Baloo? Disney has recycled different animated scenes from certain movies over the years, simply to save time and money. Animator Floyd Norman begs to differ though, saying digging up the different scenes and trying to make them fit into the new movie took up more time than just animating a whole new sequence.
When animators were working on Snow White, they used real life reference models to shoot each scene and then trace over the actors and create the animations. Recycling these animations isn’t much different from that process, as they just had to trace over the old animations and add the correct detailing. The first instance we see Disney recycle their animations was during the film “Fun and Fancy Free”, where we see scenes from Dumbo with the crows, Bambi, Ferdinand the Bull, and Springtime for Pluto.
After these instances, Melody Time also took a shot from Fun and Fancy Free with the waterfall scenes.
Some of the other early occurrences were the clouds from So Dear to My Heart were from Fantasia, the underwater scenes from Alice in Wonderland were from Pinocchio, some of the animals designs from Bambi were used in Fox and the Hound, as well as The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under have a lot of the same scenes. The Jungle Book contains some of my favourite parallels, such as Mowgli and Christopher Robin, the Sword in the Stone greeting sequence, the pups from 101 Dalmatians, and Baloo and Little John.
Another film that recycled a ton of animation was The Sword in the Stone, taking clips from Bambi, Goliath II, All in a Nutshell, 101 Dalmatians, Sleeping Beauty, Sea Scouts, Tiger Trouble, The Truth About Mother Goose, Pinocchio, and a scene from The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad that was also used in Sleeping Beauty.
Another piece that could be considered recycled or simply just an homage to original Disney princess movies is the ballroom scenes in both Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty.
There are so many other instances of Disney recycling its animations, and I personally think it makes films even more special when you can find connections and further shows you the hard work that animators went through to produce such magical films. This isn’t the “lazy” way of animating, as mentioned in the beginning it often added work and forced the artists to be creative to find ways to implement them. Next time you watch a Disney movie, see if you can spot any of the same scenes or characters!
References:
https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_recycled_animation_in_Disney_movies
