Okay let me try to restate it, with Disney animation most characters (including Beast) have one animator that does that character. When they animate Disney cells they are told to follow the contours and movements of live-action reference shots they’re given, not to invent the animation themselves. Many shots even got reused in several Disney animations for example the ballroom dance is a shot reused from Sleeping Beauty. There’s nothing in that process that allows an animator to ever animate a silhouette as a black shadow. Also the animators were not the ones in creative control, it’s a lot easier to get your animator to draw the figure first and then alter its appearance as necessary for the final film. So what the animator for Beast intended and what the director intended for those early Beast scenes could be different.
Makes sense in that more bureaucratic structure, I can see that. It’d be interesting to see the relationship between the painting stage, since that’s a separate position from animation (looking at the credits), and the printing stage. Both of those stages involve decisions regarding tonal values, and it’d be cool to see what the formula that led to the final exposure was. Did the painters make stuff brighter than what they would want so that it would print properly? Maybe contrast ratio was more important than specific lightness so that it could scale to whatever was needed when printing. It’d be interesting to hear interviews with those people.
If you like the film I suggest arranging to see it on film some time if you can.
Would love to, though I don’t think I’ve ever seen Disney animation classics in any of the theaters around that do those type of screenings. I’ve seen some older Disney live action around, but not animation. I’m definitely keeping my eyes open.