Notes on Fantasia

Timeless:

- Use of light-on-dark color schemes.
"Night on Bald Mountain" uses glaring colors and a dark background to make the scene visually "loud." The "Dance of the Sugar-Plum Fairy" sequence also has bright colors in a dark scene, but the colors aren't so contrasting, so the effect is very different.

- Pacing. High energy scenes have much faster, busier motion in them and use more camera motion. Calmer scenes tend to have long panning shots.

- Blur. Blurred colors make things like clouds look soft, and it's also used very effectively for reflections in water. Backgrounds also tend to be more blurred to put emphasis on the foreground.

- The use of angled lighting. In the clip "Night on Bald Mountain," the demons are lit from below and there are a lot of long shadows. It makes everything look sinister.

- Use of moving light source. The Nutcracker suite makes use of this, an the illumination moving across objects gives it its "magical" feel.


Outdated:

- Over-exaggerated motion and expressions. The simple line-drawn characters don't have much ability to be subtle. More detailed animations don't need the same overacted motion.

- In some places the animation seems jerky or skips a little. This may be done on purpose in some places, others not. But modern animations tend to be much smoother.

- Monochrome. Large areas of the scene, usually backgrounds, tend to be a single color. When each frame was hand drawn this must have saved a lot of time.