MAKING AN ANIMATED CARTOON PANORAMA.
The figure is depicted in a series of movement phases drawn on separate sheets of celluloid. These are used continuously, one at a time, and in their proper order during the photography. The landscape, drawn on a strip of paper, moves along under the celluloid little by little in the direction of the arrow.
The manner in which a panorama is produced is this: the landscape is drawn on a long strip of paper; this is to be moved little by little and photographed at each place to which it has been moved. The figure that is to walk, or run, is drawn in the different phases of action on sheets of celluloid. These are placed in their order over the landscape during the photography. The separate drawings of the actions of the figure were drawn so that the bodies remained relatively in the same place, but the limbs, or heads, varied in attitudes. The planning of the action in a figure for a panorama is proceeded with in the same way as that for producing a regular walk or run. One special care in the work, however, is this: the limbs as they are sketched in their appropriate attitudes in the several drawings must not have identical outlines. That is, explaining it in another way, if all of the set are placed together over the illuminated tracing glass, no two drawings should correspond with respect to the positions of the limbs. The bodies in the drawings should exactly concur in position, but if some attention is given to the rise and fall of the trunk, as in a typical walk, the screen illusion will be very much better. Slightly shifting it up and down on a vertical would effect this.
ILLUSTRATING THE APPARENT SLOWNESS OF A DISTANT MOVING OBJECT COMPARED TO ONE PASSING CLOSE TO THE EYE.
The band of paper with the landscape is moved in the direction opposite to that in which the figure is supposed to go.
The photographer has many things to think of while he is putting this panorama effect on a film. He must move the landscape strip; sometimes as little as one-sixteenth of an inch at a time; put a celluloid sheet with one of the phases of the action in place, get it in its proper order, and then turn the camera gearing to make the exposure. In some special cases he will have another matter to think of; namely, a second panorama strip to move, and at a different speed.
This is when he wishes to give a little better representation of verisimilitude than that produced by the single panorama strip.
Far-off moving objects, as we know, appear to go slower than those that are close to us. We are aware of this in looking at a distant airplane high up in the sky that we know is going very fast but seems as though it is going very slowly. And at night an illuminated railway-train in the valley below us, when we are on an elevation, seems to creep along like a snail.