zombie84 said:
Well, those links don't seem to really work. But I'll say that animation--in the case of Sleeping Beauty--doesn't photograph in the same way that live-action does when discussing depth. In live-action, its a 3d space captured 2-dimensionally--but animation is a 2-d space captured 2-dimensionally. There was never any actual depth to begin with--its all simulated from the beginning. I'm not entirely sure how depth-of-field simulations work in animation, but my understanding is that its a composite effect of some kind. When I photograph a man standing in front of a building, the building is actually ten feet behind him and thus the depth of field actually falls off in a genuine way, but in animation the BG is not actually ten feet behind the subject, its all flat to begin with.

Sorry, those links are protected from hotlinking so you have to re-enter them once you first try to load them. (Or load the main website just before trying to view the image. Ehh, try loading this page before clicking on the second link: http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews39/the_counterfeiters_blu-ray.htm )

Otherwise, with some Disney works there was a way where they'd layer different levels of the final image together. I'm pretty sure this was done in Sleeping beauty but I can't say for sure without checking. I'll try to find the images I saw (which were goofy with respect to focus) and post them later.

As for the rest, you're definitely right that film grain is so large that it doesn't match up with our basic sight. But, something feels natural about it (beyond the fact that I'm simply accustomed to it I think) and I'll just have to keep guessing what that is (next time the issue pops up in my mind at any rate).