Mulan 4K UHD (1998)

[Kyle15]

Originally Posted by professorwho

I hate to be that guy, but you mean digitally composited.

Yes I am aware, I was referring to the final photography and animation process. It's digitally animated regardless if it's inked digitally or not because it's completed (animated) on a computer. It's not inked or painted physically or photographed on film. Hence, you have Rescuers Down Under labeled the first digitally animated film for example.

To this day, almost all animation is still hand-drawn on clear sheets of paper (in Japanese referred to as Genga), which is then digitally scanned frame by frame and composited against a background, CG elements, colored in, and so on. Now, there is an increase in "webgen" animators who do stuff 100% digitally (on a tablet), but while more common in the west than Japan, it's still a really uncommon thing.

They don't do it on cels, it's all scanned on paper and the linework is isolated as a part of the process before it's colored or digitally inked. (The source work from the animators is not done on a computer if you think that's what I was implying. most productions are physical art that's scanned and colored/scanned and inked and colored)

There are numerous videos detailing this process both with scanned pencil linework and digital inks. Some productions simply digitally manipulate the pencilwork and some scan pen-inked images. You'd be hard pressed to find cels in any workflow where the intention isn't to be as analog as possible; there's simply no need to use them.

If Disney kept the original source artwork, they could re-composite it into a higher resolution, but given Mulan's vintage, I sadly doubt it.

All they'd need is the final source file to re-composite which is how they've been doing their CAPS movies already. It's not an upscale of a master. There's no scanning of anything needed because that would require re-coloring it all barring backgrounds. And knowing Disney and CAPS, they probably inked it digitally too. It's a confirmed digital ink and paint setup. Likely all that physically exists are the backgrounds and animation pencils.