HUNCHBACK OF NOTREDAME

1996

Hunchback of Notre Dame is Disney's 34th animated feature and the first film produced in three different studios: Burbank, Orlando and Paris.

The studio in Paris had previously worked on some short films, but this was the first time that the team would be contributing animation to a feature film, which made sense since it had a more direct relation to the culture and environment of the film's setting.

In total, the Paris section worked on 10 minutes of the final piece.



Hunchback is also the second film directed by Beauty and the Beast duo Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, I guess they already had the experience of working on a movie set in France. The movie features on of the best known easter eggs from Disney. Belle walking on the streets of Paris seen from the top of Notre Dame.

As always, Disney created new technology for this new film. Since the 1980's the use of CGI became more and more common in animated features, but for the first time it was used to create large crowds for Hunchback.
This had also been done for the stampede scene in Lion King. Ruben Aquino animated a wildebeest that was then multiplied digitally to create the enormous group of animals that would eventually kill Mufasa. But this time, Disney used a software that allowed the animators to change the color of the clothes and add props to some of the characters so each one would look unique.

Hunchback of Notre Dame is really different from its predecessors. Most Disney movies have dark moments but overall, the good times seem to be more frequent, you can tell by the number of "happy" song sequences in each film. But on Hunchback, you get a lot of dark and mysterious moments and some really powerful songs that you don't get to see in other Disney films.

I guess this is probably why the movie wasn't as successful as the previous ones from the Disney Renaissance, though it was really popular in France for some reason.