When was the multiplane camera invented

Scenery also fell victim to unrealistic point of views if the camera zoomed in or out on a subject. As Walt Disney explained in a recording, with traditional animation practices, if the camera zooms in on a picture of a farm at night, the moon gets bigger. The process involves moving a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another. Though not truly stereoscopic, the result creates something that appears three-dimensional.

The setup can also make the background and foreground move in opposite directions, creating a spinning effect. By this means, houses, trees, the moon, and any other background features, retain their relative sizes. When everything is ready for action, an operator takes his place at each level of the camera, adjusting the cel, lowering or raising it, top-lighting or back-lighting his part of the scene as required.

Also, by moving all cels except those on which the characters are painted across-camera at the same speed, the illusion of distance is created. The Little Mermaid was the last Disney film in which the multiplane camera was used, as computer animation technology has become the standard. This Webby award-winning video collection exists to help teachers, librarians, and families spark kid wonder and curiosity.

The motion picture camera would be used in traditional animation style concepts to create the illusion of depth and add a more realistic and interesting feel to films of its time.

The multiplane camera used a sophisticated process in which artwork would move past the camera at different speeds. And at various distances from the other artwork or images to produce the sense of depth and the illusion of parallax. Layers of artwork would be used to create the illusion of depth by leaving some of them transparent. So that the moving layers behind them would result in the appearance of movement. The multiplane camera allowed multiple layers of artwork to move at various speeds to produce the parallax process.

The effect was sometimes referred to as parallax as images closest to the camera would move fast and those further away from the camera would move slow. So, his team of camera techs and animators worked to create a panel that had many layers.

They used the traditional animation process that moves hundreds of pieces of artwork past the camera at various speeds and at various distances from one another. That creates the moving image and creates depth. Then they added transparent layers on top of those animated layers, adding more background, other characters, and objects. As each frame progressed, the result was an illusion of depth by having several layers of artwork moving at different speeds.

That meant the further away from the camera, the slower the speed. Want to see one of the original multiplane cameras? Three original multiplane cameras from The Walt Disney Studios are still around today.