Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation
Original Book by Charles Solomon
© Wings Books, 1994

THE CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS DEPART, 1960-1989, page 280

The young animators at the studio found a project better suited to their talents in The Great Mouse Detective (1986), based on Eve Titus' popular children's books about Basil of Baker Street, a Sherlock Holmesian mouse.  With the assistance of the mouse/physician Dr. David Q. Dawson, Basil defeats a scheme by the insidious Professor Ratigan to kidnap Queen Moustoria on the eve of her Diamond Jubilee and usurp the throne.

Instead of trying to disguise Basil's obvious literary ancestry, the filmmakers flaunted it, simultaneously invoking and spoofing Holmes.  Much of the film displayed the sort of energy the Silly Symphonies had during the early 1930s, the energy of young artists celebrating their abilities.  The few weak moments — a production number for a barroom singer and the scenes with Queen Moustoria — occurred when the animators seemed to be holding back, rather than strutting their stuff.

The climatic confrontation between Basil and Ratigan was set inside the mechanism of Big Ben.  Computer graphics were used to produce an ominous, complex environment of interlocking gears.  The computer generated frame-by-frame images of the moving gears, which were photocopied onto cels and painted.  Animator Phil Nibbelink worked with computer specialist Ted Gielow to create the scene.

"I've always enjoyed doing chase scenes, and I like point-of-view shots," Nibbelink explains.  "You could never achieve them in standard animation because it's limited to flat artwork — all you can do is truck in or out, or pan left and right.  When you create the entire environment in the computer, as we did for that sequence, you can spin around and turn corners and move in directions that are very dramatic.

Glen Keane designed most of the characters in the film and did the key animation for Ratigan.  The final battle between Ratigan and Basil on the hands of Big Ben displays the same strength as the bear fight in The Fox and the Hound [1981]: Ratigan sheds his comic sophistication and becomes a towering embodiment of menace.

Despite a last-minute change in title from Basil of Baker Street to The Great Mouse Detective.  The film did good business ($25.3 million) and received excellent reviews.  The critics agreed that new artists had proved they could do animation comparable to classic Disney features.

Jeffrey Katzenberg, chairman of Walt Disney Pictures, announced he intended to keep the animation division busy.  "From the outset, both Michael [Eisner] and I felt that the one area of the company that needed the most encouragement and had the greatest potential was Disney animation.  They'd been releasing a new feature every three to four years.  We discovered that if it's properly managed and staffed and equipped, the operation is capable of supporting twice that level of production — a new feature every eighteen months to two years — without compromising the quality of animation."