November 25, 2021 • 25 mins
Before computers, women helped Walt Disney bring his hand drawn animations to life as Animated Cel Inkers, a little known profession that would have a ripple effect over the style of animations for generations to come. Helen and Matt explore this underrated, innovative and inventive profession.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is job Seleete, where we examine old timey jobs
that are long gone. This week we're learning about animators
before computer animation, when each frame was drawn and painted
by hand. We're talking about the animation cell inchor bringing
(00:24):
cartoons to life, drawing everything by hand, the early days
of Disney nibs. It's not what you think Work Weeks,
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, snow White and Peter Pan that. We've
got another really cool guest today. It's Patricia Zone, a
writer about the fine arts and cinema for Vanity Fair.
(00:47):
Her aunt used to actually do this job and that's
what got her interested in researching it. Before we begin,
what do you know about animation before computers? Well, I
think about flipbooks, Right. You would draw a picture and
then you would draw a bunch of pictures that are
slightly different, and then if you did a flipbook, it
would look like they were moving. Yeah, and that's totally
(01:09):
not how they did it. Apparently, back in the day,
they actually had a plastic film and they would draw
on this plastic film and paint the plastic film, and
they did it all by hand. And that's the position.
Today we're talking about the people who made these still
images come to life animation sell inchors. Oh that we
(01:31):
actually have an audience question about this topic. Yeah, some
one of our listeners, whatever awesome listeners, actually submitted a
question in regards to this profession. I'm ex Poklar, and
I want to know what the incortent painters did to
get fair lines looking so smooth like without the use
of computers, you know, thanks, So, how did they get
(01:54):
those lines to look so smooth without computers? That's a
great question. We're going to answer that later in the
show when we talk about tools of the trade, but
right now we are going to get into it. Are
you ready, listeners, Let's hop into the job. Slete time
machine back to the Great Depression, the hey day of
this particular type of animation. Boo boo boop. Matt Men
(02:18):
and I have been practicing our sound effects of hopping
back in the time machine. Okay, Matts. So, like, what
did you have to know how to do to do
this job? Well? Many did have an arts background, many
did have portfolios to prove they could draw well, but
more particularly technical aptitude, proof of precision, a steady hand,
artistic talent, and just creativity in general. We're all good
(02:41):
things to help you with this one steady hand I
mean if it's all done by hand. Yeah, you would
have to have a steady hand. I mean you can't
be like a little bit shaky, like like hold off
on the coffee. Yeah, definitely. So, Matt, who were the
people that did this job. Most of them were young,
younger under but all of them were women. Really, yes,
(03:06):
they were. The women were the animation cell anchors. The
men were the actual animators. And you're probably wondering right now,
what's the difference. What's the difference. Yeah, So the difference
is the animation cell anchors were the ones who essentially
brought each cartoon position to connect with the next cartoon
(03:29):
or like you were saying before about the flip books,
like you had a bunny, You drew a bunny, and
then like the next frame, the bunny was like all
the way across the room. The cell. The animation cell
anchor would be the person who would get the bunny
from point A to point B, like all the little
frames that have to go to get this bunny from
this part of the room to that part of the room. Yeah. Yeah,
(03:52):
it was very tedious. Work as you can. I mentioned
I'm still tripping on the fact that men were called
animators and women were called sell anchors because sexism. Yeah,
so the animators they drew the cartoons in positions that
were common, but you know, to to draw every single frame,
(04:12):
you know, that's just men. They didn't they couldn't handle that.
But you know these women that were these animation cell anchors,
they were just as qualified as the men, of course,
but well, because of sexism, they were given the more
tedious work. They were not paid as well. But still
it was a very appealing job because I mean getting
(04:35):
to work on you know, Mickey Mouse cartoons and Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full length animation
featured by Disney. That's still exciting to be a part
of that. And you're talking about the thirties, right, this
is the thirties like still kind of part of the
Great Depression. Like there were a lot of people that
were out of work, and some people were desperate for work.
And I when I researched for this episode, I kept
(04:59):
coming across the were tracing, but they were drawing unique pictures.
You know that. In fact, I bet you they would
be offended if if you have said that they were
just tracing, you know, they were actually drawing every image,
coloring these cell celluloid sheets with India ink. Oh, so
that's where the words cell comes from from. You know,
(05:19):
the job is animation cell anchor CEL and cell is
short for celluloid. That's correct. Probably should have said that earlier.
All right, let's look at the skills needed here. Let's
get more into the skills. He needed to train them
the way he thought was best, and he was a
complete perfectionist. Okay, we should probably pause right there and
(05:43):
say that he were actually talking about Walt Disney himself,
whoa So like the other departments, the women had to
be trained, and they entered a five day week, three
hour day, five months training period where every Friday they
(06:08):
had elimination Day. It was really a question of up
or out at the Walt Disney studio. They were looking
for a very steady hand, the ability to make a
very delicate line, but also the ability to take an
animator's drawing and impart even more life to that line.
(06:35):
I found it really interesting when she said they had
to have such a delicate line so that they could
actually improve on the animator's work. So it was the
women's job, the animation sell innchor to sort of even,
you know, one up the animator and make what they
drew come even more to life. So in a certain way,
(06:56):
I would say maybe the animation sell anchor's job was
even more difficult than the than the animators because they
had they had to be so precise with the detail,
like make this bunny Bamby look alive. Yeah, that's crazy,
almost correct the mistakes of the animators sometimes, you know.
And she was saying that Disney, Walt Disney was a perfectionist,
(07:21):
that he essentially hired the best talent he could find
and then when they got there, he's like, you don't
know anything. We're going to retraining. So it's cool that
Walt Disney was kind of creating his own art form
in a way, because this wasn't anything that had been
done before, and he and he was retraining everyone who
came to work for him in a very specific way.
(07:43):
Now we're going to look at the tools of the
trade and specifically what Patricia's aunt Ray used while she
was on the job. Oh and listener Max who submitted
the question, this is where you're going to get your answer,
and she had an array of pens to choose from,
an array of nibs to choose from some of the
(08:04):
finest nibs. They wore white gloves with their thumb and
four fingers cut out, and they usually had on smocks
so that their hair or fuzz from their Angora sweaters
wouldn't get into the drawings. And they sometimes had nibs
(08:28):
like pointers that they would use those to hold down
the drawing even further, even more than the pegs would
hold it down, because it could slip a bit on
the pegs. And they would carefully, delicately, painstakingly paint these
very very important and wonderfully exuberant and lively lines the
(08:52):
colors of the characters. A character like Jiminy Cricket, for example,
needed twenty seven different colors of paint, and when you're
working with twenty seven different paint colors in one small
little Jiminy Cricket, that can be quite challenging. Okay, Matt,
I am not being naughty or fresh or sexually harassing you,
(09:15):
But what is the nib? Oh? Watch your mouth. Yeah.
A nib is just the end of a pen that
you would dip your ink into so oh like like
a feather, like a feather quill like Benjamin Franklin used.
That would be an example. Yeah, so they had the
(09:36):
they had some of the finest nibs at Disney Studios.
It is a funny word. I'm sorry. Every time I
hear it, I giggle, like, oh gosh, it's a PG show.
She mentioned Jimminy Cricket and using twenty seven different types
of paint just for Jimminy Cricket, So lots of details,
(09:56):
lots of lots of very unique colors that came from
their work. I mean, I just can't imagine, like you
were saying earlier, you know, it's if it's twenty four
frames a second, meaning they have to do twenty four
selves every second of film, and they're just and they're
drawing basically the same thing over and over and over
(10:18):
and over again, Like it would be crazy making for something. Yeah,
I guess it kind of would be. It's hard for
just today. We just take computers for granted that you know,
copy paste, copy paste, you know, like, but they were
the copiers and pasters, except they were human copy pasters.
That's crazy. And they must have had so much I mean,
(10:40):
these must have been the most detail oriented people to
make the exact same cell with just slight different, Like
every second had to be slightly different, but the rest
of it mostly had to be exactly the same. Wow,
that is that's real talent and real precision. They had
(11:11):
such unique colors, they didn't know what to name these colors,
so they started naming them after the women who were
the animation cell anchors in the the ink and paint
department at Disney. WHOA, that is super cool. Oh I
wouldn't I wouldn't mind having a color called Hong. What
color would hang be? Maybe black? No, no, you know
(11:31):
it would be It would be like black, but with
like if you turned it in the light, it might
be a little bit like reddish. I'm trying to picture
that and I can't, which is wonderful. A typical day,
they could be producing up to eight to ten animated
cells an hour. So if it's an eight hour day,
you do the math, that's eighty animated cells in a
(11:54):
work day. Now, that's before snow White. Why why was
snow white at Turning White Matt? Before snow White, a
short film was more common because they were just easier
to make it would be about fifteen thousand cells and
it would be you know, just a few minutes long,
and you can you could pump these out more. But
(12:15):
Walt Disney had this grand vision for a full length,
you know, motion picture that could compete with the live
action motion pictures. And so for Snow White, if they
wanted it to be a full length film, they needed
it to be around two d and fifty thousand cells. Wow,
I just you know, I'm thinking back. I haven't seen
snow White in a while, but like I'm thinking back
(12:37):
to all the little like the birds better saying, the
birds that flit around her head, and the seven dwarves
and the hot prints, Like, there is a lot going
on in Snow White. So I can't imagine these women
are just slaving like all day on birds and bunnies
and dwarves. So do you know if any of these
(12:57):
women ever were able to rise in the ranks. One
notable person who became very influential was Hazel Seul. Walt
soon hired a young woman from the neighborhood, Hazel Sewel,
whose mother had been an early film editor or what
(13:17):
they were called then a film cutter, who lived nearby,
and soon after her sister Lillian Bounds joined them. Hazel
became head of a very small blackening and opaquing department.
Soon it was called tracing and opaquing, and then it
(13:38):
was called eventually inking and painting. That is really cool
that in such a sexist time in the thirties, that
this woman, Hazel Seul was able to be head of
a department at Disney, Like that's a big deal. Yeah,
And she loved this team of all women and essentially
had a lot of control, Like she was the one
(14:01):
who came up with all this really strict criteria that
gave us, Like the Disney look. Is that a thing?
The Disney look? Yeah, I think it is, especially from
that time. Like if you look at snow White and
you look at Peter Pan, there is a look. There's
a very specific look that's like, I mean, I don't
know how to destroy like a like a fluidity to
(14:23):
the motion. You know, it's Disney. Yeah. Yeah, I think
that's so cool that this woman, Hazel Sewell was able
to like put her mark or stamp and help make
a Disney brand, like make that very specific look that
that everyone knows is the Disney look. Of animation definitely,
and by World War Two. I should add that Walt
(14:43):
Disney completely trusted her to lead the team. We talked
earlier about how walt was particularly a perfectionist, and she
kind of filled that role and took it to a
new level. So I think she's a name that you
should be familiar with. You know, what I think is
so cool about this job is that it's a combination
(15:04):
of technical and creative, right, Like, you had to be
a creative person, you had to be an artist, a
painter in a drawer, but also there was a lot
of technical feet to it. You had to use this
celluloid paper, you had to use these very specific pens,
you had to have an extremely steady hand. So it
was just a very cool mix of technical and creative,
(15:27):
which probably led to this pride that these women had
despite the fact that it was such a difficult profession.
When did this job start going away? Helen? Did you
know that there were a lot of strikes at Disney
in the nineteen forties or during World War Two? No?
I had no idea. Yeah, No, Waltz actually had a
(15:49):
bad name there for a while because he kind of
gained a reputation for not treating his workers well enough,
and so there were a lot of strikes animators and
animation sell anchors as well, although they didn't participate in
the strikes as much, and so this actually slowed down
production quite a bit during World War Two. A few
years later, and we have a Xerox like system. Mechanization
(16:15):
began by the late fifties when the Xerox machine could
have an impact, and Walt was in touch with the
Xerox Corporation, and they began testing various machines at the
studio to see if they could actually just copy the
animator's drawings without human intervention. And the other thing that
(16:39):
happened is that Walt's attention was drifting to theme parks
and his TV series, So by the end of Sleeping
Beauty they were testing this Xerox mechanism, and in fact,
it worked quite well. They thought perhaps they could train
the anchors to work the Xerox machines. But the anchors
(17:00):
had a lot of pride in their work, understandably, and
they resented tremendously the thought that their jobs were going
to be taken away by a machine, and so most
of them did not stay on My Aunt worked for
Disney until nineteen fifty, which was just about the time
(17:20):
that things began to change. Then she was also having
her children. And by the way, once you had children,
a lot of the women left. And this was one
of the other reasons why Walt did not like hiring
women in departments other than the incompaign department, because the
women would get married and haven't want to have babies
and stop working but Walt. The other thing that happened
(17:44):
at the Disney studio is that Walt was pretty paranoid
about his production process, and he didn't like the women
to take their inking work home, And so many of
them went to work for a rival studio. And the
animators had also gone to work for rival studios. And
now are of the men who had gone on strike
went to work at places like Hannah Barbera where they
(18:04):
let you take work home. Oh, isn't that what an insult? Like, Hey,
spectacularly talented hand painter and drawer, can you switch to
pushing this Xerox machine button? Instead? What? What a what
a gut punch? Well, you can tell the difference between
(18:38):
movies animated feature films by Disney that came out beginning
in nineteen sixties compared to earlier decades. I'm sure the listener,
you know, recalling movies that, like, think about a movie
like The Jungle Book or Robin Hood that came out
in this I think I think those are the sixties.
Oh yeah, Robin Hood that's like distinctly different from that
(19:00):
sort of sleeping beauty style. For sure, doesn't have the
same aesthetics, Like it doesn't look as good. Yeah, you're right,
it's just it's not as fluid, like there's like a
real fluidity to the to the earlier movies. I I
also like, it's so it's so typical that these men
who are the animators are like, yeah, get rid of
these women who are like one upping our paintings and
(19:22):
making the better boo women. Well, and it all comes back,
and I want to stress again how Walt Disney was
looking for a way to not only speed up production
but not rely on just animators in general. So yeah,
of course this just kept on going until we get
to the nineteen eighties and the digital process kind of
(19:46):
taken over with computers. We have Pixar that comes around,
which introduces the computer Animation Production System or CAPS, and
from there the rest is history. We know that it's
all don computers these days. That's so interesting because I
love Pixar. I love the style of Pixar, but I
(20:08):
think what makes Pixar amazing is the realistic right. There's
there's some some frames of those animated movies that are like, whoa,
that looks like a photograph. It looks so real, it
looks like a video camera or something. And so that's
kind of what's mind blowing about Pixar. But there is
something to be said about those early days of Disney
being like very artistic and just that fluidity of movement
(20:32):
that is just so stylistic that you know that's it's gone.
Now we don't have that anymore. That brings us to
the legacy of these animation cell anchors. There is no
doubt they were extremely inventive to just the overall progression
of animation. So in fact, the Inky Department was quite inventive.
(20:53):
They weren't just a receptive department. They were an inventive department.
And the animators hadn't thought of everything, and especially when
it came to female characters, they added a little too
to the cheeks and to the eyebrows and to the
hair that I think really made a difference in the
(21:13):
final films. I never even thought of that, but that's true.
Like a lot of the characters are women. I think
that is such a really good point. If you're having
only men draw women, there's something not right about that,
Like there's something that's lost with having only men draw women,
Like you need a female eye to catch some of
(21:33):
the details that men might necessarily catch. It's not just
boobs and butt skuys, it's not just boobs and butts.
I mean, that's really sad that, like this job, like
many many of the jobs that we talked about on
this podcast, Matt, it's just it got lost to automation.
And part of me thinks, like, yeah, obviously, you don't
(21:54):
want to have an army of people hunched over drawing
the same essentially painting over and over and over again.
I gets such a labor intensive job. So obviously, like
the march of progress, like things are going to get
animated and things are going to get taken over by
machines and computers. But but I'm really thankful that this
job existed in a time when probably a lot of great,
(22:16):
very cool artistic jobs were not available to women, definitely.
And I just to kind of come full circle for
this episode. At the beginning of this episode, we were
talking about how essentially these women were or like robots,
even like they were, you know, it was all about technicality,
whereas now I would say it was more about the
(22:39):
art and not really necessarily the craft. I mean, like
the fact that they created brand new styles entirely that
were later replicated by machines, you know, like they they
were they taught those computers later on what these animation
cell anchors did originally. So I am so so glad
(23:02):
that we are doing this job and talking about this
on our podcast, because I think the average person has
no idea the history of like the Disney style of animation,
how much this army of women really contributed to that.
And when you think about snow White and Mickey Mouse
and Peter Pan and those old style the very first
(23:24):
features animated features that Disney put out, that it was
women that had so much of a hand in creating
that style. And I hope people know that and spread
the word literally their hands. Matt, do you think that
these women got carpal donald syndrome? Absolutely? I mean you
(23:48):
they must have suffered physically. If you're spending eighty hours
a week hunched over, drying precise, you know, inking and
drawing precise with knibbs. Come on, that can't be good
on the body, she said, nibs. Yeah, no, I had
to google this. But apparently carpal tunnel was only first
(24:10):
described in the nineteen thirties. So yeah, they probably had
carpet tunnel, but they just what was going on. They
invented carpal tunnel. They were the first ones to make
carpel tunnel a thing. All this conjecture, Helen, it's reckless.
Just stick with what we know now. Job Slete is
(24:32):
produced for I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge
Podcast for You. It's hosted by us Helen Hong That's
Me and Matte That's Me. The show was conceived and
produced by Steveson Markey, Anthony Savini, and Jason Elliott. Our
editor is Tommy Nichol, Our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our
(24:53):
production coordinator is Angie Hynes, and theme music is by
the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. A special thanks to our I
Heart Radio team, Katrina Norvelle, Nikki Etour, Ali cantor, Carrie Lieberman,
Will Pearson, Connell Byrne and Bob Pittman.
This is job Seleete, where we examine old timey jobs
that are long gone. This week we're learning about animators
before computer animation, when each frame was drawn and painted
by hand. We're talking about the animation cell inchor bringing
(00:24):
cartoons to life, drawing everything by hand, the early days
of Disney nibs. It's not what you think Work Weeks,
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, snow White and Peter Pan that. We've
got another really cool guest today. It's Patricia Zone, a
writer about the fine arts and cinema for Vanity Fair.
(00:47):
Her aunt used to actually do this job and that's
what got her interested in researching it. Before we begin,
what do you know about animation before computers? Well, I
think about flipbooks, Right. You would draw a picture and
then you would draw a bunch of pictures that are
slightly different, and then if you did a flipbook, it
would look like they were moving. Yeah, and that's totally
(01:09):
not how they did it. Apparently, back in the day,
they actually had a plastic film and they would draw
on this plastic film and paint the plastic film, and
they did it all by hand. And that's the position.
Today we're talking about the people who made these still
images come to life animation sell inchors. Oh that we
(01:31):
actually have an audience question about this topic. Yeah, some
one of our listeners, whatever awesome listeners, actually submitted a
question in regards to this profession. I'm ex Poklar, and
I want to know what the incortent painters did to
get fair lines looking so smooth like without the use
of computers, you know, thanks, So, how did they get
(01:54):
those lines to look so smooth without computers? That's a
great question. We're going to answer that later in the
show when we talk about tools of the trade, but
right now we are going to get into it. Are
you ready, listeners, Let's hop into the job. Slete time
machine back to the Great Depression, the hey day of
this particular type of animation. Boo boo boop. Matt Men
(02:18):
and I have been practicing our sound effects of hopping
back in the time machine. Okay, Matts. So, like, what
did you have to know how to do to do
this job? Well? Many did have an arts background, many
did have portfolios to prove they could draw well, but
more particularly technical aptitude, proof of precision, a steady hand,
artistic talent, and just creativity in general. We're all good
(02:41):
things to help you with this one steady hand I
mean if it's all done by hand. Yeah, you would
have to have a steady hand. I mean you can't
be like a little bit shaky, like like hold off
on the coffee. Yeah, definitely. So, Matt, who were the
people that did this job. Most of them were young,
younger under but all of them were women. Really, yes,
(03:06):
they were. The women were the animation cell anchors. The
men were the actual animators. And you're probably wondering right now,
what's the difference. What's the difference. Yeah, So the difference
is the animation cell anchors were the ones who essentially
brought each cartoon position to connect with the next cartoon
(03:29):
or like you were saying before about the flip books,
like you had a bunny, You drew a bunny, and
then like the next frame, the bunny was like all
the way across the room. The cell. The animation cell
anchor would be the person who would get the bunny
from point A to point B, like all the little
frames that have to go to get this bunny from
this part of the room to that part of the room. Yeah. Yeah,
(03:52):
it was very tedious. Work as you can. I mentioned
I'm still tripping on the fact that men were called
animators and women were called sell anchors because sexism. Yeah,
so the animators they drew the cartoons in positions that
were common, but you know, to to draw every single frame,
(04:12):
you know, that's just men. They didn't they couldn't handle that.
But you know these women that were these animation cell anchors,
they were just as qualified as the men, of course,
but well, because of sexism, they were given the more
tedious work. They were not paid as well. But still
it was a very appealing job because I mean getting
(04:35):
to work on you know, Mickey Mouse cartoons and Snow
White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full length animation
featured by Disney. That's still exciting to be a part
of that. And you're talking about the thirties, right, this
is the thirties like still kind of part of the
Great Depression. Like there were a lot of people that
were out of work, and some people were desperate for work.
And I when I researched for this episode, I kept
(04:59):
coming across the were tracing, but they were drawing unique pictures.
You know that. In fact, I bet you they would
be offended if if you have said that they were
just tracing, you know, they were actually drawing every image,
coloring these cell celluloid sheets with India ink. Oh, so
that's where the words cell comes from from. You know,
(05:19):
the job is animation cell anchor CEL and cell is
short for celluloid. That's correct. Probably should have said that earlier.
All right, let's look at the skills needed here. Let's
get more into the skills. He needed to train them
the way he thought was best, and he was a
complete perfectionist. Okay, we should probably pause right there and
(05:43):
say that he were actually talking about Walt Disney himself,
whoa So like the other departments, the women had to
be trained, and they entered a five day week, three
hour day, five months training period where every Friday they
(06:08):
had elimination Day. It was really a question of up
or out at the Walt Disney studio. They were looking
for a very steady hand, the ability to make a
very delicate line, but also the ability to take an
animator's drawing and impart even more life to that line.
(06:35):
I found it really interesting when she said they had
to have such a delicate line so that they could
actually improve on the animator's work. So it was the
women's job, the animation sell innchor to sort of even,
you know, one up the animator and make what they
drew come even more to life. So in a certain way,
(06:56):
I would say maybe the animation sell anchor's job was
even more difficult than the than the animators because they
had they had to be so precise with the detail,
like make this bunny Bamby look alive. Yeah, that's crazy,
almost correct the mistakes of the animators sometimes, you know.
And she was saying that Disney, Walt Disney was a perfectionist,
(07:21):
that he essentially hired the best talent he could find
and then when they got there, he's like, you don't
know anything. We're going to retraining. So it's cool that
Walt Disney was kind of creating his own art form
in a way, because this wasn't anything that had been
done before, and he and he was retraining everyone who
came to work for him in a very specific way.
(07:43):
Now we're going to look at the tools of the
trade and specifically what Patricia's aunt Ray used while she
was on the job. Oh and listener Max who submitted
the question, this is where you're going to get your answer,
and she had an array of pens to choose from,
an array of nibs to choose from some of the
(08:04):
finest nibs. They wore white gloves with their thumb and
four fingers cut out, and they usually had on smocks
so that their hair or fuzz from their Angora sweaters
wouldn't get into the drawings. And they sometimes had nibs
(08:28):
like pointers that they would use those to hold down
the drawing even further, even more than the pegs would
hold it down, because it could slip a bit on
the pegs. And they would carefully, delicately, painstakingly paint these
very very important and wonderfully exuberant and lively lines the
(08:52):
colors of the characters. A character like Jiminy Cricket, for example,
needed twenty seven different colors of paint, and when you're
working with twenty seven different paint colors in one small
little Jiminy Cricket, that can be quite challenging. Okay, Matt,
I am not being naughty or fresh or sexually harassing you,
(09:15):
But what is the nib? Oh? Watch your mouth. Yeah.
A nib is just the end of a pen that
you would dip your ink into so oh like like
a feather, like a feather quill like Benjamin Franklin used.
That would be an example. Yeah, so they had the
(09:36):
they had some of the finest nibs at Disney Studios.
It is a funny word. I'm sorry. Every time I
hear it, I giggle, like, oh gosh, it's a PG show.
She mentioned Jimminy Cricket and using twenty seven different types
of paint just for Jimminy Cricket, So lots of details,
(09:56):
lots of lots of very unique colors that came from
their work. I mean, I just can't imagine, like you
were saying earlier, you know, it's if it's twenty four
frames a second, meaning they have to do twenty four
selves every second of film, and they're just and they're
drawing basically the same thing over and over and over
(10:18):
and over again, Like it would be crazy making for something. Yeah,
I guess it kind of would be. It's hard for
just today. We just take computers for granted that you know,
copy paste, copy paste, you know, like, but they were
the copiers and pasters, except they were human copy pasters.
That's crazy. And they must have had so much I mean,
(10:40):
these must have been the most detail oriented people to
make the exact same cell with just slight different, Like
every second had to be slightly different, but the rest
of it mostly had to be exactly the same. Wow,
that is that's real talent and real precision. They had
(11:11):
such unique colors, they didn't know what to name these colors,
so they started naming them after the women who were
the animation cell anchors in the the ink and paint
department at Disney. WHOA, that is super cool. Oh I
wouldn't I wouldn't mind having a color called Hong. What
color would hang be? Maybe black? No, no, you know
(11:31):
it would be It would be like black, but with
like if you turned it in the light, it might
be a little bit like reddish. I'm trying to picture
that and I can't, which is wonderful. A typical day,
they could be producing up to eight to ten animated
cells an hour. So if it's an eight hour day,
you do the math, that's eighty animated cells in a
(11:54):
work day. Now, that's before snow White. Why why was
snow white at Turning White Matt? Before snow White, a
short film was more common because they were just easier
to make it would be about fifteen thousand cells and
it would be you know, just a few minutes long,
and you can you could pump these out more. But
(12:15):
Walt Disney had this grand vision for a full length,
you know, motion picture that could compete with the live
action motion pictures. And so for Snow White, if they
wanted it to be a full length film, they needed
it to be around two d and fifty thousand cells. Wow,
I just you know, I'm thinking back. I haven't seen
snow White in a while, but like I'm thinking back
(12:37):
to all the little like the birds better saying, the
birds that flit around her head, and the seven dwarves
and the hot prints, Like, there is a lot going
on in Snow White. So I can't imagine these women
are just slaving like all day on birds and bunnies
and dwarves. So do you know if any of these
(12:57):
women ever were able to rise in the ranks. One
notable person who became very influential was Hazel Seul. Walt
soon hired a young woman from the neighborhood, Hazel Sewel,
whose mother had been an early film editor or what
(13:17):
they were called then a film cutter, who lived nearby,
and soon after her sister Lillian Bounds joined them. Hazel
became head of a very small blackening and opaquing department.
Soon it was called tracing and opaquing, and then it
(13:38):
was called eventually inking and painting. That is really cool
that in such a sexist time in the thirties, that
this woman, Hazel Seul was able to be head of
a department at Disney, Like that's a big deal. Yeah,
And she loved this team of all women and essentially
had a lot of control, Like she was the one
(14:01):
who came up with all this really strict criteria that
gave us, Like the Disney look. Is that a thing?
The Disney look? Yeah, I think it is, especially from
that time. Like if you look at snow White and
you look at Peter Pan, there is a look. There's
a very specific look that's like, I mean, I don't
know how to destroy like a like a fluidity to
(14:23):
the motion. You know, it's Disney. Yeah. Yeah, I think
that's so cool that this woman, Hazel Sewell was able
to like put her mark or stamp and help make
a Disney brand, like make that very specific look that
that everyone knows is the Disney look. Of animation definitely,
and by World War Two. I should add that Walt
(14:43):
Disney completely trusted her to lead the team. We talked
earlier about how walt was particularly a perfectionist, and she
kind of filled that role and took it to a
new level. So I think she's a name that you
should be familiar with. You know, what I think is
so cool about this job is that it's a combination
(15:04):
of technical and creative, right, Like, you had to be
a creative person, you had to be an artist, a
painter in a drawer, but also there was a lot
of technical feet to it. You had to use this
celluloid paper, you had to use these very specific pens,
you had to have an extremely steady hand. So it
was just a very cool mix of technical and creative,
(15:27):
which probably led to this pride that these women had
despite the fact that it was such a difficult profession.
When did this job start going away? Helen? Did you
know that there were a lot of strikes at Disney
in the nineteen forties or during World War Two? No?
I had no idea. Yeah, No, Waltz actually had a
(15:49):
bad name there for a while because he kind of
gained a reputation for not treating his workers well enough,
and so there were a lot of strikes animators and
animation sell anchors as well, although they didn't participate in
the strikes as much, and so this actually slowed down
production quite a bit during World War Two. A few
years later, and we have a Xerox like system. Mechanization
(16:15):
began by the late fifties when the Xerox machine could
have an impact, and Walt was in touch with the
Xerox Corporation, and they began testing various machines at the
studio to see if they could actually just copy the
animator's drawings without human intervention. And the other thing that
(16:39):
happened is that Walt's attention was drifting to theme parks
and his TV series, So by the end of Sleeping
Beauty they were testing this Xerox mechanism, and in fact,
it worked quite well. They thought perhaps they could train
the anchors to work the Xerox machines. But the anchors
(17:00):
had a lot of pride in their work, understandably, and
they resented tremendously the thought that their jobs were going
to be taken away by a machine, and so most
of them did not stay on My Aunt worked for
Disney until nineteen fifty, which was just about the time
(17:20):
that things began to change. Then she was also having
her children. And by the way, once you had children,
a lot of the women left. And this was one
of the other reasons why Walt did not like hiring
women in departments other than the incompaign department, because the
women would get married and haven't want to have babies
and stop working but Walt. The other thing that happened
(17:44):
at the Disney studio is that Walt was pretty paranoid
about his production process, and he didn't like the women
to take their inking work home, And so many of
them went to work for a rival studio. And the
animators had also gone to work for rival studios. And
now are of the men who had gone on strike
went to work at places like Hannah Barbera where they
(18:04):
let you take work home. Oh, isn't that what an insult? Like, Hey,
spectacularly talented hand painter and drawer, can you switch to
pushing this Xerox machine button? Instead? What? What a what
a gut punch? Well, you can tell the difference between
(18:38):
movies animated feature films by Disney that came out beginning
in nineteen sixties compared to earlier decades. I'm sure the listener,
you know, recalling movies that, like, think about a movie
like The Jungle Book or Robin Hood that came out
in this I think I think those are the sixties.
Oh yeah, Robin Hood that's like distinctly different from that
(19:00):
sort of sleeping beauty style. For sure, doesn't have the
same aesthetics, Like it doesn't look as good. Yeah, you're right,
it's just it's not as fluid, like there's like a
real fluidity to the to the earlier movies. I I
also like, it's so it's so typical that these men
who are the animators are like, yeah, get rid of
these women who are like one upping our paintings and
(19:22):
making the better boo women. Well, and it all comes back,
and I want to stress again how Walt Disney was
looking for a way to not only speed up production
but not rely on just animators in general. So yeah,
of course this just kept on going until we get
to the nineteen eighties and the digital process kind of
(19:46):
taken over with computers. We have Pixar that comes around,
which introduces the computer Animation Production System or CAPS, and
from there the rest is history. We know that it's
all don computers these days. That's so interesting because I
love Pixar. I love the style of Pixar, but I
(20:08):
think what makes Pixar amazing is the realistic right. There's
there's some some frames of those animated movies that are like, whoa,
that looks like a photograph. It looks so real, it
looks like a video camera or something. And so that's
kind of what's mind blowing about Pixar. But there is
something to be said about those early days of Disney
being like very artistic and just that fluidity of movement
(20:32):
that is just so stylistic that you know that's it's gone.
Now we don't have that anymore. That brings us to
the legacy of these animation cell anchors. There is no
doubt they were extremely inventive to just the overall progression
of animation. So in fact, the Inky Department was quite inventive.
(20:53):
They weren't just a receptive department. They were an inventive department.
And the animators hadn't thought of everything, and especially when
it came to female characters, they added a little too
to the cheeks and to the eyebrows and to the
hair that I think really made a difference in the
(21:13):
final films. I never even thought of that, but that's true.
Like a lot of the characters are women. I think
that is such a really good point. If you're having
only men draw women, there's something not right about that,
Like there's something that's lost with having only men draw women,
Like you need a female eye to catch some of
(21:33):
the details that men might necessarily catch. It's not just
boobs and butt skuys, it's not just boobs and butts.
I mean, that's really sad that, like this job, like
many many of the jobs that we talked about on
this podcast, Matt, it's just it got lost to automation.
And part of me thinks, like, yeah, obviously, you don't
(21:54):
want to have an army of people hunched over drawing
the same essentially painting over and over and over again.
I gets such a labor intensive job. So obviously, like
the march of progress, like things are going to get
animated and things are going to get taken over by
machines and computers. But but I'm really thankful that this
job existed in a time when probably a lot of great,
(22:16):
very cool artistic jobs were not available to women, definitely.
And I just to kind of come full circle for
this episode. At the beginning of this episode, we were
talking about how essentially these women were or like robots,
even like they were, you know, it was all about technicality,
whereas now I would say it was more about the
(22:39):
art and not really necessarily the craft. I mean, like
the fact that they created brand new styles entirely that
were later replicated by machines, you know, like they they
were they taught those computers later on what these animation
cell anchors did originally. So I am so so glad
(23:02):
that we are doing this job and talking about this
on our podcast, because I think the average person has
no idea the history of like the Disney style of animation,
how much this army of women really contributed to that.
And when you think about snow White and Mickey Mouse
and Peter Pan and those old style the very first
(23:24):
features animated features that Disney put out, that it was
women that had so much of a hand in creating
that style. And I hope people know that and spread
the word literally their hands. Matt, do you think that
these women got carpal donald syndrome? Absolutely? I mean you
(23:48):
they must have suffered physically. If you're spending eighty hours
a week hunched over, drying precise, you know, inking and
drawing precise with knibbs. Come on, that can't be good
on the body, she said, nibs. Yeah, no, I had
to google this. But apparently carpal tunnel was only first
(24:10):
described in the nineteen thirties. So yeah, they probably had
carpet tunnel, but they just what was going on. They
invented carpal tunnel. They were the first ones to make
carpel tunnel a thing. All this conjecture, Helen, it's reckless.
Just stick with what we know now. Job Slete is
(24:32):
produced for I Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge
Podcast for You. It's hosted by us Helen Hong That's
Me and Matte That's Me. The show was conceived and
produced by Steveson Markey, Anthony Savini, and Jason Elliott. Our
editor is Tommy Nichol, Our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our
(24:53):
production coordinator is Angie Hynes, and theme music is by
the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. A special thanks to our I
Heart Radio team, Katrina Norvelle, Nikki Etour, Ali cantor, Carrie Lieberman,
Will Pearson, Connell Byrne and Bob Pittman.
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