Fun With Multiplanes

Walt Disney gets credit for all kinds of things. One is the development of the multiplane camera, put to the test in The Old Mill, released in 1937.

But Leonard Maltin’s “Of Mice and Magic” quotes Shamus Culhane as saying Ub Iwerks had one for his studio first, made from the rear of a Chevrolet for $300.

Maltin mentions it was used in the Willie Whopper cartoon The Cave Man and ComiColor shorts such as The Valiant Tailor (to give its correct title) and The Headless Horseman, all released in mid-to-late 1934.

The murky, worn prints of the Iwerks cartoons on public domain DVDs don’t do any justice to the backgrounds or the process. Here’s a likely example from The Valiant Tailor.



The foreground, lake and brown formations are on one layer, the green behind it is on another layer and the castle and blue mountains, out of focus to help create perspective, is on another layer. All move at different rates as the scene is panned left to right.

The “different speed” overlay was a trick used at Warner Bros. to try to get some depth into its cartoons. Tex Avery seems to have loved it in long background pans, with characters moving between layers.

Here’s another one. The animation is in the foreground; the house and greenery are on one background layer and everything blurred in the distance is on another, with the two backgrounds moving at different speeds.



Thunderbean Animation has been working on restoring the ComiColor shorts since at least September 2016. It doesn’t sound as if they'll be completed for you to see any time soon.

Art Turkisher provided the score to this cartoon and animation screen credits were given to Grim Natwick and Berny Wolf. All had worked for the Fleischers.