I think this one, coz of lot of different landscapes, lot of flowing movements and action sequences in 2D would make it one of the most difficult t animate.

It was the 30s and nobody had ever tried to do a full length animated film before. I’m sure a lot of the stuff they did was a first for them.

This one maybe, since the scene of the ship sinking took a whole year to animate ( and that scene only lasts a couple of minutes (3 minutes) in the entirety of the film). Also, TLM occurred after a long Disney drought so to speak.


Fun fact: each of the bubbles you see in the water in Disney's original TLM were hand-painted. And there are loads of them.

My next choice TIED with TLM is Snow White, because the animation by Walt's company was just starting out.

Considered that it's first full length animated movie in that era, so definitely. I wonder why The Little Mermaid considered as the hardest?

I don't think, I KNOW. Here is the thing with Sleeping Beauty: It was the last completely hand-painted movie. It has hyper-detailed backgrounds. And because of said hyper-detailed backgrounds, creating the characters for it was quite a headache. There is a reason the movie had such a long production time. It is basically what Disney tried to do since movie one, putting a movie book on screen, and only with Sleeping Beauty they finally succeeded to get the effect they wanted. And to animate a proper prince.

Snow White was a great achievement, but Disney cut corners for the movie...the rotoscoping, the focus on the dwarves so that the animators could focus on what they were already able to do well, Snow White sitten around as much as possible, not showing the legs of the deers. But Sleeping Beauty, that one went all out. It is a freaking masterpiece and totally unique.

@Sparklefairy- the underwater scenes, and read wavesurf's comment. getting the lighting right was nearly impossible

Yes, the bubbles, I also read the facts about the painted bubbles. So much work. And they worked a lot with the colors as well. Only Ariel's hair has several shades of red for different scenes.

Well, it was the first ever, so I imagine it would have been super difficult. But I also think that SB and TLM were both probably super difficult.