The text was translated from Russian. Sorry for probably rough translation.
For original version in Russian click here

    There were told more than enough about cost, laboriousness and complexity of hand drawn animation on the whole and pro-Disney animation in particular. Just a few seconds of life of only one character may take as much as week of laborious work! It is no wonder that pro-Disney full length animated feature is luxury which only big animation studios that have a lot of trained artists and decent financing can afford. The production of first Disney animated feature demanded about three years and 500 artists and one and a half million bucks. By the most modest estimations this sum of money is a equivalent to forty millions today's dollars and it is necessary to take into account that Walt Disney paid less than should and did not pay for overtime work.
    Is it possible to simplify the task? It certainly is! There are a lot of ways to do that. For example one can reduce the number of characters that are presented on the screen simultaneously or use break-down animation (means change of one character's part without changing others) or just slacken off too rigid requirements for animation's quality. Finally the essence of pro-Disney and other classic fashions of hand drawn animation presuppose ways to simplify the task, to reduce the labor expenditure and to avoid the most routine work. In particular we talk about reusing of the material that has been created earlier. It is hardly a secret that in the basis of classically fashioned animation lays a principle of severing of the shot into layers (those may be layers of glass, celluloid or virtual layers in computer memory) and one can do anything with each of them irrespective of others. The freedom of combination and changes of separate layers give a wonderful opportunity to shoot (to photograph, to render etc) same sequence above (or inside) the different backgrounds and thus to reuse the drawn material. Try to find the producer of commercial animation who neglects to use such cloning. There is countless quantity of limited animation examples!
    And still it is necessary to give due to Walt Disney - in the late thirties he agreed on such compromises with reluctance. In many respects owing to this reluctance his early animated features are avowed masterpieces of animation. Of course even Walt Disney couldn't keep up with such level of quality always and everywhere. For example in the propaganda short SEVEN WISE DWARVES the whole animated sequences from SNOW WHITE were reused. Later during the war times Disney studio used all possible methods of limited animation. But in the full length animated features Walt didn't want to fall so low and, to avoid temptations, did not make any follow-ups to his own features.

    Nevertheless there is no reason to think that there aren't any examples of cloning in Disney animation. They are and a lot of them! Though, of course, no one will advertise them. Some of them can be noticed by even inexperienced audience while others can not be noticed by an expert so they unexpected! While doing a research for this article I took a lot of pleasure every time I found one of the examples that shown below. I dare assume that you will also enjoy it. I'll reserve for myself the right not to discuss the ethical side of topic. The cloning in Disney animation was done and we must live with this fact.
    I'll begin with the examples of hidden cloning which were typical for Disney animated features of the sixties and the seventies. It is difficult to say exactly at what stage of production the decision to reuse already available material was made. It's even more difficult to say whether it was intentional when a story artist of new productions put to storyboard the sequences which were very much alike to ones that were already done. In such cases just a little tuning was required. Anyway I can show a lot of instances which tell us about the tendency of the saving animator's efforts. Why animator's efforts? Because, the so-called "tuning" is the work for the assistant of animator. Just look and think is it really difficult?

    So here you can see the pictures from SWORD IN THE STONE to the left and the pictures from JUNGLE BOOK to the right. The number of characters, the number of their movements, the succession of events and timing are the same in both cases. The character's design and backgrounds are the only differences.
    It is funny that some years later Mowgli became a model for another boy - Christopher Robin. In 1977, when three independent shorts about Winnie the Pooh were combined into MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH, there were produced about 10 minutes of a "new" animation which should logically connect those different parts and conclude them. The studio looked for the simplest (the cheapest) way to do it. As a result Christopher Robin repeats sad Mowgli's walk. He slips at the same places as Mowgli, brushes away his hair at the same time, as Mowgli, picks the same twig, flungs the same two pebbles.

    I'll show later that Pooh's cartoons are crowded with examples of cloning at all. However it is important to not think, that others more prestigious and expensive projects avoided the economy. Above I have given the example from JUNGLE BOOK. And here other examples, this time they stay at the borders of one film.

    It is easy to show some examples of reusing sequences, which didn't need any changes in drawing at all. It became possible because of invention of photocopy process by Xerox. Xerox allowed to copy drawings to cels automatically and almost eliminate hand work of inkers. The amount of cels or the amount of copies on one cel henceforth was practically unrestrictedly. The photocopy process was successfully used in ONE HUNDRED AND ONE DALMATIANS and since then became an irreplaceable tool in making animation.
    At that the Xerox operators could multiply animated sequences with phase shift. For example at first in the beginning of the stairs appears one instance of a pup. When it crosses the third step of the stairs there appeares the second instance of the same pup in the beginning of the stairs. When this "second" pup reaches the place of the "first" pup, we'll see another copy of our pup in the beginning of the stairs, while original pup will reach the middle of the stairs. All three copies of one pup move absolutely identically (since this is the same pup all the time) just in the different phases of movement. You can see this pup in many instances below.

    Probably you have already guessed that some other pups in this shot are other instances of the same pup but they are shifted not only on a phase, but also on position on cel. That way three or four pups make an impression of a big troop of puppies.
    The scene from WINNIE THE POOH AND THE BLUSTUERY DAY, where two heffalumps use their trunks as an accordion, is a good (though more primitive) example of phase shift. Heffalump's instance at right lags behind the left instance for just one frame. Add alternative colors to this and the characters are different enough. But much more often Xerox was used for banal copying without any phase shift.

    And here you see the examples of cloned sequences. There are no any changes in them. Look, these scenes are identical up to trifles. What's so special about this twig, Mowgli? By the way, there is another instance of this scene in the short THE SMALL ONE(1978).

    In MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH, except for other, there is an example of unreserved abusing of cloning. Each of the three shorts which all became a part of the full-length anthology includes a scene, where Christopher Robin hurries up to help his friends. In all the cases there was used the same animated sequence though once it had been mirror reflected (in the last case the boy changed closes, and the chewing donkey was lost due to logical absence of the grass there).

    And still Disney's ROBIN HOOD is the absolut champion of cloning. The makers of ROBIN HOOD made multiple copies of fibers, hares, badgers, elephants, rhinoceroses and others. Those cloned scenes stuffed in the picture to stop up numerous holes in it. I can't list all these scenes but I'll try to recollet some of the scenes that were borrowed from previous animated features. In particular such is this scene at Robin's camp where all dances of Maid Marian are redrawn animation of Snow White. And the dance of Little John and Lady Kluck precisely meets with dance of Baloo the Bear with King Louie.

    It won't be out of place to say that despite the identity of the action the dance scenes in two animated features differ in the degree of picture's richness. One may see that SNOW WHITE feature translucent shadows and wins in coloration and design. Plus the animation is done on 1's (means a new drawing per frame or 24 drawings per second). So please estimate the degree of cheapness of animation in ROBIN HOOD. It is hardly a copy of the old quality but just a low-graded reproduction of the original animation of classic masterpiece.
    You want more? No problem! See you in the second part of the article!. Sadly the second part is available only in Russian so far.