Long before Who Framed Roger Rabbit, people were experimenting with combinations of live action and animation. My question is, how was this actually done in the early days?
I know the animation for Roger was merged with the film at ILM, but in the days before Lucas, it must have been difficult. In his quasi-authorized* biography Disney’s World, Leonard Mosley states that two early films by Walt Disney, Puss in Boots and Red Riding Hood, were done by drawing the animated sequences directly onto the film of the live actors. Is this how the Alice comedies were done as well? It seems difficult, since film is quite small, compared to the large animation cels and paper normally used for the job (and were used on Roger).
*I say “quasi-authorized” because Mosley was somehow given permission to take text and pictures from the archives of the Walt Disney Company, but did not show the company his text (since he was doing a book also showing Walt’s human side-that is, the bad things about him), as is normally done.