I was considering recycling my XEROGRAPHY POST and turning it into a Writer's Extended cut but after ANDREAS DEJA posted on DEJA VIEW about the Xerox System and how it works in action, I've decided to spice things up a bit with even more info and a different name.
So yes it's still recycling the older post but I have twice the amount of information and I want to make a few corrections as well as revise the post so it looks more professional...so let's get on with it:
On October 6 1942, a new copying technique was patented by American Physicist CHESTER CARLSON based on contributions by Hungarian Physicist PAL SELENYI.
Because in the past, printing of documents required a heavy supply of ink and physical pieces of plates to print works and images onto paper.
Not only was this laborious but it also meant that the probability of a copy matching another copy was very slim due to arrangements, quality of the paper, cost of material, etc.
So the need to make multiple copies of Documents and Books in a more economic fashion was a must.
The irony is that even though the tech was founded in 1942 when WWII was almost at it's peak since the American entry into the war,
The tech was not taken very seriously and the older techniques were still being championed.
That was until 1959 when the XEROX 914 was introduced which brought in a fully automated system to businesses.
So, what does this all have to do with Animation?
This was an idea spearheaded by UB IWERKS where he pondered about a way to automate the inking process as well as capture the essence of the artist's linework without tracing over it.
Once he discovered XEROX's Photocopy system, he not only sold the idea to Disney but also to every other animation studio in the world.
(Mostly through economics and influence.)
I can hazard a guess why the industry decided to move on to XEROGRAPHY for their cels starting in the 1960s.
And their are multiple factors to back that up too. But for now, let's shorten it down to these factors:
1958 was not a good year for some.
That was because of a Recession that occurred that year.
And one thing that was affected by this was the Failure of FORD's Edsel Cars unveiled that year.
And another was the risk of diminishing returns in the box office, especially in the wake of the unfortunate Box-Office Bombing of Disney's SLEEPING BEAUTY in January 1959.
"Don't worry about it Aurora.
We'll recoup the costs with Home Video and Vault Screenings."
With all that combined, the need to lower the costs for animation was frugal since the old guard was either dying out or flat out retiring and the need to continue the medium for the next generation was a must so something had to be done to lower the costs.
Theatrical Cartoon Shorts were dying out due to the mantra being that short animation thrives better on TV but the need to continue with theatrical features was frugal.
So when XEROX introduced their 914 machines, the need to replace traditional inking was now necessary.
Of course, there were some upsides and some downsides to all of this.
The upside of Xerography was that it quickened the inking process.
In the earliest days, the old style of inking was that you draw your character on animation paper.
Then you hand over the cleaned up drawings over to the inkers, which were women wearing anti-smudging gloves to avoid smudging the inks as well as not let their skin oil damage the celluloid, using various amounts of INDIA INK to provide that smooth hand-inked outline to the characters.
The end result after the inked cels were beautifully crafted animation cels that's passed on to the paint department in which they turn the cel backwards to paint the acetate with acrylic paint.
Then you hand over the cleaned up drawings over to the inkers, which were women wearing anti-smudging gloves to avoid smudging the inks as well as not let their skin oil damage the celluloid, using various amounts of INDIA INK to provide that smooth hand-inked outline to the characters.
Yes, this is my own inking but it does illustrate a point.
And this is actual pen inking, not Xerox.
Here are some examples of beautifully crafted Hand-Inked Animation cels below:
Not only did it risk strained wrists but it also ate up a lot of money spent on materials like Paper, Ink pens, Acrylic Paint, Acetate, etc.
Xerox on the other hand provided a new method of Inking that was a different from the traditional method.
In this new system, the drawing and cleaning up of the animation was still there.
but after cleanup, the drawings are sent over to the copiers.
In Disney's XEROX system, they had a machine that required two or three rooms due to the sheer size of the tech.
This results in Animation cels that look like this
With this in mind, it quickened the process of inking the cels for the animation and lowered down the costs.
And they used Lithograph plates to hold the inks together.
Now for the Downsides:
The Xerox System had a mixed reputation.
Walt Disney himself hated the system because it not only diminished the fantasy feel of the artwork but the artwork now looked rough around the edges due to Xerography being originally intended for copying of documents, photographs, spreads, all that business stuff.
Not for animation.
This resulted in the Ink Toners & Lithograph plates copying off the Pencil Lead pressures, aka Line Weight, and whatever minor erasures were left and then transferring it to the animation cels.
In fact, Walt expressed regrets with the art direction of 101 Dalmatians at first but when that film became a Box Office success, he reluctantly relented.
I also heard that the Women who worked at the Ink Departments also despised the XEROX system because now that the Xerox Operators managed the inked artwork, the women were now without any work.
Despite the internal negativity, there were artists like the Nine Old Men who actually championed the new Xeroxed look because, finally, they can see their animation literally come to life under their own Pencil tip Pressure Line Art instead of an inked-traced Amalgamation of their work.
And I've heard stories about how defensive MILT KAHL was about his artwork.
"SACRE BLEU!!! I'M SKETCHY!!!"
He wanted everything about his construction lines to remain unchanged from the originally cleaned up artwork to a point that many cleanup artists dreaded getting Milt's drawings because they fear they'd piss off the man for trying to water down his artwork.
And this not only pertained to his Pencil line art 
but also the paint department.
There were many in the paint department that so desperately wanted to clean up the line art so that it emulates the cleaner line art of the pre-1959 work of Disney's so they tried to use Q-Tips to clean up the artwork.
If Milt found out, this might have been the end result to his other artists.......
Physically speaking..... not artistically.
animation done via Xerox could not have colored outlines.
While color toners were available, this was the POST 1958-Recession recovery and the desire to keep costs down meant that the system could not afford the toners or the tech required for said color toners so Black Toners were the only way to go for the time being.
And besides,
TV animation even in digital form doesn't use colored outlines to this day....
The 1960s cost of color toners problem is a similar problem today with the cost of Color Toners or Ink Cartridges for our Computer Printers.
When I originally made the 2023 post, I used an Image of Canon Pixma Ink Cartridges at my Local London Drugs and remarked about how outrageous it was to charge us people with those high prices for Printer ink Cartridges or Toners.
But those were 2023 Prices.
But those were 2023 Prices.
The cost has gone up slightly after that.
Nothing to do with On-Again Off-Again tariffs.
This is just Post-Covid inflation at it's finest.
And just like the reliability problems with the multiplane camera,
I have a hunch that the lithograph system for Xerox had it's share of reliability problems too.
Still, the dedication to the artwork meant changes needed to happen so many an artist had to adapt their artwork so that it fits the new norm for the XEROX method of inking.
Whereas FAIRY TALES can be a mixed bag for filmmakers,
One thing that XEROX excelled at was EMULATING THE COMIC BOOK AESTHETIC.
You ever read a Comic Book from the time period and marveled at the roughness of the artwork, which was really a result of the printing processes of the time period?,
Well, Animation sort of Captured that....
For example, LUPIN III benefited with this new change because many an artist fought tooth and nail to preserve the artistic style of the late Kazuhiko Kato, aka MONKEY PUNCH.
Cannot use naked women or Den the barbarian so instead, I'm using this unused cel of
Hanover Fiste attacking two robot guards.
Such as in THE TWELVE TASKS OF ASTERIX(1976)
Despite the xeroxed line Capturing the line art of the original French Comics very well,
After this film, and Lucky Luke in 1979, Albert Uderzo prohibited GAUMONT from using Xerox in future Asterix movies in favor of hand-inking,(And I said only Albert Uderzo because Rene Goscinny died on November 5 1977.)
This mantra lasted until 2006 with the Viking movie which was the only ASTERIX movie to use digital Ink and Paint before the decision was made for all future Asterix Movies to use CGI.
I also mentioned in past posts that Martin Rosen, famous for his adaptations of Richard Adams' WATERSHIP DOWN & THE PLAGUE DOGS, absolutely despised XEROX so much that he actually prohibited his studio NEPENTHE FILMS from ever using the tech for the animation in both films in favor of hand-inking all the way.
And it absolutely shows.
Former animator JOHN KRICFALUSI preferred hand-inking for his animation but he could only afford it for the Ren and Stimpy Pilot BIG HOUSE BLUES
So for the rest of the original run of Ren & Stimpy,
Former animator JOHN KRICFALUSI preferred hand-inking for his animation but he could only afford it for the Ren and Stimpy Pilot BIG HOUSE BLUES
both SPUMCO & GAMES,
He had to contend with either XEROX
Or the few episodes he allowed to be made with Digital Ink and Paint such as
Man's best friend.
In 1977 with the release of THE RESCUERS,
The tech had improved to a point that it was now possible to do at least a minor attempt at Colored Outlines.
So a few toners were used such as Grey for the mice Characters like Bernard and Bianca.
But at times, this made the visuals more dated to a point that the 1970s mold of the film could not escape so the tech improvements to me were a hit or miss deal.
And the way I see it, I still kind of stand true to my words on how the colored lines in THE RESCUERS from 1977 were a lie since IT'S STILL XEROGRAPHY so that meant with one toner meant one color for each drawing.
And often at times, that toner does not work very well for other colors.
Take for example this scene from early on in THE RESCUERS.
The Xerox crew knew that were was no way Grey toners would help blend BIANCA'S fur with her yellow hat though that didn't stop them from using it with her Pink hat and scarf as shown in the cel of her sleeping on Bernard's shoulder above the Grand Mouse One.
Now for the Grand Mouse, charcoal was used for the toners but since his fur is brown, and his clothes are an analogous shade of blue and purple, I can let slide.
The same philosophy for color toners would work for MISS BRISBY from
Don Bluth's THE SECRET OF NIHM
Nicodemus on the other hand is stuck with charcoal toners for his inks but that doesn't matter since his robes are a mix of black, dark teal, and purple.
By the early 90s, the computer started to supplant the Xerox process.
While drawing on paper still persisted for animation until WACOM CINTIQS took over, the ink and paint process was taken over by the computer side of things.
As I said before in my original 2023 post,
I also stated that in a similar way artists in the 60s to the late 80s complained about how scratchy the xeroxed line art looked compared to Hand-Inking,
The same mantra could be said about what we lost in authenticity when animation made the complete switch from Paper Drawings to Vector art lines and HDR Colors.
At the time I made the original post, I lacked more info and relied on my own findings.
But now that I'm wiser, I can tell you what was the authenticity that was lost and difficult to replicate on digital media.
The old style of Photographing 2D Animation is actually a form of Stop-Motion no matter how hard you look at it.
Shown below is an example of a camera that's used to photograph animation.
It can range from Cameras supplied by Panavision or ARRI,
while others can be a traditional Super8 Camera used by independent artists.
But the principal is the same,
Cameras shoot everything one frame at a time in animation.
(Though most animation is shot on TWOS.)
And the cameras are always pointed downwards on the artwork.
Unless you were working for Fleischer studios in the mid-30s where they had their patented STEREO-OPTICAL SETBACK CAMERA where they shot the artwork horizontally.
So what's the authenticity of the animation cels I'm talking about?
Everything physical about each individual animation cel.
Not just the acetate themselves but the back texture of the dry Acrylic Paint.
And how it's shot underneath the camera with the overhead lights turned way up.
On September 13 2023, about 12 days after I did my Original XEROX POST,
Andreas Deja post on his blog DEJA VIEW a blogpost about...
And he pointed out something rather fascinating which is the reason for me to go back to the 2023 post and revise it.
Did you know that Animation Cels you physically hold on your hand look very different compared to how you see that same Cel Frame on the actual finished product?
Let's take for example this scene of the King and his Grand Duke from CINDERELLA(1950)
Now let's compare that cel to the same scene shown below, which I have to split into two images due to the camera work circa 1949.
Ok. So the artwork looks a little dark in the saturation eh?
But that's because the full image shared by DEJA was a publicity shot of how the animation often gets photographed with them layers.
As said by Deja in his LITTLE JOHN post,
The artwork actually uses Duller Colors compared to how they look on film.
That's because when the animation is shot underneath the camera, it has to look bright and clear so the overhead lights turn up the colors...
Though not like this screenshot below which might just be another publicity photo meant to be shown on a magazine.
This is how that scene is susposed to look from the filmstock:
So I guess that was what DON BLUTH meant by authenticity of physical animation cels.
The back texture of acrylic paint, the feel of the acetate celluloid when holding each frame, the overhead lights that brighten the scene.
It all makes sense.
Maybe that was what made many artists in the late 80s and early 90s so resistive against the use of computers for 2D Animation.
The use of CGI was fine for them but the idea of using paint programs and digitizing tablets were considered a taboo for some artists which include
DON BLUTH(Secret of Nihm, Dragon's Lair, American Tail, etc.),
Jim Jinkins(DOUG, both Nickelodeon & Disney)
Danny Antonucci(Ed,Edd n Eddy)
Bill Plympton(Your Face, Hair High, etc)
The list would be long so those are my examples.
Aside from Color Correction in PRINCESS MONONOKE in 1997 as well as a few scenes in COWBOY BEBOP in 1998,
Eventually in the later years, the old method of xeroxing into cels waned when the potential for the computerized Vector Line Art was mandated.
And a majority of Anime studios in Japan refused the digital look until they had no choice but to make the switch at the Turn of the Millennium.
But up until the late 90s, Japanese Animation Studios refused the Computer.....Not exactly.
They refused Digital Ink and Paint but still allowed Computers to be used for CGI, Color Correction, and editorial.
But not the Animation Cels.
Here are some examples:
YU YU HAKUSHO(1992)
NEON GENESIS EVANGELION(1995)
Even though the TV Anime switched to digital in 2002,
the Theatrical films stuck with Cels until The Rise of Darkrai in 2008.
I also know the real reason why the Japanese refused DIGITAL INK AND PAINT until the turn of the Millennium:
The Japanese were still reeling in from the early 90s recession, not helped that AKIRA bombed in the Japanese Box-Office in 1988 and the only reason why that film made so much money later on was because of it's highly successful American Release in 1989.
Although the Computer would lower production costs for an Anime Production, the machines from Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, Fuji, Hewlett Packard, etc. would have been prohibitively expensive for the rental costs of said machines and the Off-The-Shelf Software.
The 1997 Remake of Akira Toriyama's DR. SLUMP was one of the first attempts to have the animation industry move on to the computer for Inking and Painting the drawings.
Most anime outright chose to avoid Digital Ink and Paint for anything that's not CGI or one of their opening sequences.
That was until rising costs which were related to the DOT-COM-BUBBLE BURST mandated that anime in Japan should move all Ink and Paint to the computer
NO IFS-ANDS-OR BUTS!!!
Though unlike with Disney's Proprietary CAPS system used for their films,
The rest of the industry preferred OFF-THE-SHELF hardware & software from the likes of
HEWLETT PACKARD, DELL, LENOVO, TOON BOOM, AUTODESK, ADOBE, AMD, etc.
And the tech has evolved a tenfold since the early days of digital ink and paint animation.
What could only be done on hardware that cost about as much as a new Highrise apartment suite, now could be done on hardware that can be bought for a couple thousands of dollars.
And it doesn't matter whether we use Windows, Mac OS, or a flavor of Linux,
the tech and cost for each machine has been made affordable.
Well this is a different perspective on the Xerox technique for animation but I was inspired by Andreas Deja's post 11 days prior to the posting of this entry so I had to go back and create a reimagining of the 2023 post of mine with more knowledge than I had that time and less mental frustrations too because professionalism is key to success, especially in demeanors of an animator.
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