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Once approved in outline by the story staff (Disney is sometimes outvoted), the story is adapted into sequences, scenes, shots, and the main action illustrated by some of this staff with a series of rough sketches. A director is then assigned to conduct the picture through to its conclusion. He and subordinate music, art, sound-effects and dialogue directors, look over the sketches, decide on the timing. In a typical Disney cartoon, the action and sound move according to an intricate schedule in which the frames of the film are synchronized with the musical beat or sound effects.
While the music staff prepares the score, the dialogue director collects his cast of voices (Disney is always Mickey Mouse) and records the dialogue. The sound-effects department records a third track. In the recording room, sound engineers then synchronize the three sound tracks on one. Meanwhile background artists have been sketching out the scenes of the story, the limits in which the characters will eventually move according to the rhythm set for them.
The story is now ready for the animation. The 75 animators are the master builders of the Disney organization. Upon them depend the unfailingly familiar forms of Mickey, Donald, Pluto, et al. The senior animators sketch out the main movements of the characters in accordance with the set tempo, leave the intermediate steps to assistant animators, "in-betweeners," students from whose ranks the future animators will be chosen.
In the animation department are the strangest sights in the Disney plant. Animators leer and grimace into mirrors adjusted over their drawing boards, cocking one eye questioningly, darkly knitting brows, leaping up and down, squawking in experimental frenzy, and then calmly jotting down the effects with a few swift lines. There used to be a "zoo" at the Disney studios, and animators would study the antics of the animals in preparing their scenes. But for some years it has been recognized that the best cartoon effects are not to be got from animals acting like animals, but from animals acting like people. Mickey Mouse, of course, looked like a human from the start. He has the large soft eyes and pointed face of his creator. Occasionally another portrait creeps into the company. In character and appearance, Max Hare very much resembles clownish Heavyweight Max Baer.
When an animator and his assistants complete a scene, a test camera photographs the sketches on a film strip. Running this back and forth in a small two-way projector known as a moviola, the animator spots "bugs and bobbles," jerkiness or missteps in the animation. Not until a set of drawings is approved by Walt and the director does it go to the inking and "painting department, where over 150 nimble-fingered girls trace the sketches on 12½-by-15-in. celluloid transparencies, called "cels," paint in the designated coloring from a store of 1,500 colors and shadings. All Disney cartoons have been done in color since February 1935.