[jamesbressi]

At first glance one may assume "laziness" in the sense of decreasing production costs, but Disney has a history of being much, much more calculated.

My hunch is a psychological affect/effect on the viewer and I would love to investigate the implication further. Anyone have any ideas?

[sounddust]

Here's some background:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYt9UmastGo&feature=relat...

Seems like the explanation is rather simple: the animator (Wolfgang Reitherman) enjoyed reusing animations from old Disney movies and was known for it.

[jamesbressi]

Nice find, though whether intentional or not I am still curious as to what kind of influence this can have on the viewer.

While this study is directly related http://pom.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/2/187 to what I am trying to find, it does offer enough insight to draw a new hypothesis to test.

"Familiarity was a function of chart performance but likeability was not. Hence repetition increases familiarity but has little effect on likeability."

So, is it then possible that when he "copied" a classic animation and reused it in a new one that it possibly served as a function of how well the new animation performed? Remember, although in the study I found, familiarity had to do with the exact same song and performance, the copy of the animations very well are picked up subconsciously to the repeat Disney consumers and very well could have influenced its theatrical (ticket sales, home video sales) performance.

[replicatorblog]

Yes, and if you read the book "DisneyWar" highlighting the Eisner era you'll learn that the Jungle Book was made during a dark period after Walt's death when the studio was at its creative Nadir. People were hardly working, they lacked direction, etc.

[olavk]

The Disney Studio lacked resources at the time of Robin Hood production, and reusing animations was an easy way of saving money.

If you watch lower-budget animations, like made-for-TV animation, you will see animations being reused all the time.