Registration - Text 1
One of the principal difficulties facing animators working in drawing on film animation is that of matching the drawings. It is impossible to use the technique traditionally used for animated drawings, known as the retracing method. The NFB animators, far from wanting to achieve any kind of standardization, would thus put in place different methods and equipment to enable them to maintain their subject’s position from one drawing to the next.
The methods employed to make possible the drawing’s registration on the film stock vary according to the kind of film stock used. Depending on whether the animator is working on transparent film stock or on black leader, the working method is completely different. In the case of transparent film stock, Normal McLaren, for example, perfected a system which enabled him to project onto his work bench the image he had just drawn, in order to draw the next:
It consists of a camera gate and its claws, to which I added a system of lenses and mirrors. This optical grouping reflects the image one has just drawn within the frame of the image to be drawn.[1]
