I don't understand what the problem with The Black Cauldron is. I enjoyed the movie as a child, and as an adult. It holds up very well if swords and sorcery is the kind of thing you're into. A little too much scruffy mascot character, but it has to have some defining feature that makes it a Disney film.
cuing animation on twos rather than ones.
Film goes at 24 FPS, right? Snow White appears to make use of all 24 frames. Robin Hood on the other hand, looks like it goes at 12 FPS. So they cue the animation on two frames rather than one.
You can actually see this in action if you watch Titan A.E. Note how smooth the CG elements move in contrast to the hand-drawn pieces.
You definately see a lot more craft in the oldest Disney pieces. I understand that this statement is just broadly condensing the whole thread but really. It's kind of a shame that Disney deviated from being such a talented animation studio to churning out crap that they shipped in from Korea and China. Walt Disney's frozen head is spinning in it's glass capsule.
PS: Having seen Song of the South like 11 times when I was a kid, that movie is in no way offensive. The most laughable complaint I've heard is that it glorifies slavery, except for the fact that it's set during the carpetbagger era. It might be an old-timey Minstrel story, but considering the conduct of the characters I can't see the movie as being anything but a positive influence on children. If we're so obsessed with political correctness that we can't let our children watch a movie where a black man wears red lipstick, but we'll let our children watch a movie like Atlantis that features gunfights and inferred murder, I think it's a pretty good sign of what kind of nation we've become, and just how racist our society really is.