Even Fleischer Studios did 3D married with 2D before Computer Animation was a twinkle in John Whitney Sr.'s eyes-The Stereooptical Setback Camera

I did a post like this early on when I started this blog back in February 2023 but sometimes I should go back and retouch it for today's newer readers via a new Blogpost.

Aw crap.... I spoiled the surprise.

Well.... You saw that patent so I might as well explain.

For you see, ANIMATORS want to cut corners to make certain things easier to animate.

Sure, they can animate characters just fine but what about backgrounds?

Well for starters, there was a time when animation was all drawn frame-by-frame for everything right down to the BACKGROUNDS.

And cartoons like WINDSOR MCCAY's GERTIE THE DINOSAUR is no exception.

While ANIMATION FANS prefer if the BGs are drawn frame-by-frame in perspective and dislike it when animators have to cheat scenes with things like Stop-Motion Xerography or CGI,

The reality is that ANIMATION IS EXPENSIVE AND TIME CONSUMING.

Not only are certain scenes expensive but most animators don't have a lot of patience and a steady wrist that some BGs required to keep things rigid.

"It's all a terrible strain on the ANIMATOR's wrist."

So.......

Tools were made to keep costs low and economical.

BGs and some foreground elements are made as separate layers of cels and canvases.

But sometimes tools that allowed for parallax shots aren't gonna cut it with even a simple multiplane camera.

And FLEISCHER STUDIOS realized that when making a BETTY BOOP short.

They looked at early prototypes of the multiplane camera and discovered that even though the foreground elements are moving in parallax just like how real life objects to in your eyes,

The artwork elements still are flat and have no depth and this is detrimental especially since many animation studios preferred non-animatable objects to have some level of hyper-realism with them gouache paints being used.

So, the solution was to create a TABLE TOP system that allowed for objects to appear in 3D on the camera while the characters interacted with them.

One of the very first shorts that I'm aware of that uses this technique is in the dance sequence in the BETTY BOOP short POOR CINDERELLA.

But I have a hunch the technique found greater fame when used in the many POPEYE shorts that FLEISCHER studios made.

Here are some examples of the times FLESICHER used the Setback Camera in their Cartoons:

Or the Full Cartoon SINBAD since that's in the Public Domain.

Just be mindful of the color Palette as I don't think that's the original 1930s Colors.

For many years, I've always wondered how FLEISCHER's animators managed to to keep the cels upright when shooting scenes with this camera since Animation traditionally was always shot DOWNWARDS but the Tabletop required to be shot Horizontally.

Well, this YouTube SHORT of how they did the process tells it all.

Though FLEISCHER decreased the use of the setback in favor of the more convention downward or multiplane camera as the years went by as we enter the 1940s, they at least used it for one sequence in 1941 and that was the opening downward pan of NEW YORK CITY for MR BUG GOES TO TOWN(1941)

Above is how they pulled it off 

while below is the actual opening credits.....

(Damn NTA and their print. Why can't they just respect the original PARAMOUNT print?)

The sad truth is that the technique was exclusive only to FLEISCHER STUDIOS.

Either they didn't patent it properly to others or they felt the SETBACK Camera was unique to them so they refused to outright license or even let others rent the equipment.

Not even FAMOUS STUDIOS wanted to use the tech in favor of the conventional downward or multiplane cameras.

It wasn't until Computers made everything possible to bring back 3D models

but because of the ANTI-3D AND 2D blend mantra amongst ANIMATION fans, even DIGITAL artists preferred the old school approach for MULTIPLANE Camera sequences.

So that meant forgoing 3D perspective for 2D BGs or Foregrounds due to the mantra.

What the computer could do for the camera was to actually move it.

In the past, the Camera could not move at all. Only the Artwork.

But with the advantages of the Computer and Key-frame software, it made moving the camera possible and certain patience to time the movement can just be done with automation via setting the keyframes on the timeline.

In 1998, DISNEY released MULAN and while you can't tell if they used it or not, they used an updated take on the classic MULTIPLANE CAMERA called FAUX-PLANE.

It's where a flat 3D BG element is somehow modified somewhat like a paper sculpture on the computer to allow it's elements to look 3D

but with the artistic finesse of a traditionally painted BG.

One prime example was the opening PAN of the GREAT WALL OF CHINA which uses said technique.

Here are some BEHIND THE SCENES shots from my 2013 Blu-Ray 

And here is are some screenshots from the actual film using the FAUX-PLANE technique:

Pay close attention to the WATCHTOWERS and you'll see how they're in depth.

Unfortunate for most artists and some fans, DISNEY decide it was more economical and more of a proper 3D to use the deep canvas Plug-in for MAYA during production of TARZEN(1999) so that's what the artists used.

So you see,

The People behind POPEYE were looking for shortcuts as well.

They just had to get creative with their tech and engineering.

One thing that's not universal about the Setback Camera and Toon Boom's CG integration is the formats for 3D assets.

I knew this first hand when making a piece of animation with a 3D BG back in 2022

I wanted to have a STARBUCKS in one of my thesis films to show that I can still put 2D Characters on a 3D BG just like in the FLESICHER days.

Clearly, I was on to something while my fellow students stuck to just 2D backdrops and simple camera moves.

Though to be honest, the above animations were a real hassle for my former MSI LAPTOP I had back then due to it's 2.8ghz Kaby Lake Core i7, GTX 1050 chipset, and 16GB ram.

Nowadays, I have a more powerful RYZEN 9 9950X3D system paired with an RTX 4080 in a custom-built system I built with my own hands.

So a scene like the one above won't be a pushover.