<P> These ideas were somewhat similar to elements of the 1946 French film version of Beauty and the Beast, which introduced the character of Avenant, an oafish suitor somewhat similar to Gaston, as well as inanimate objects coming to life in the Beast's castle . The animated objects were, however, given distinct personalities in the Disney version . By early 1990, Katzenberg had approved the revised script, and storyboarding began again . The production flew story artists back and forth between California and New York for storyboard approvals from Ashman, though the team was not told the reason why . </P> <P> Disney had originally considered casting Jodi Benson from The Little Mermaid as Belle . They eventually decided upon Broadway actress and singer Paige O'Hara in favor of having a heroine who sounded "more like a woman than a girl". According to co-director Kirk Wise, O'Hara was given the role because she "had a unique quality, a tone she would hit that made her special", reminiscent to that of American actress and singer Judy Garland . O'Hara, who, after reading about the film in The New York Times, competed for the role against 500 hopefuls, believes the fact that lyricist Howard Ashman admired her cast recording of the musical Show Boat proved integral in her being cast . </P> <P> Production of Beauty and the Beast was to be completed on a compressed timeline of two years rather than the traditional four - year Disney Feature Animation production schedule; this was due to the loss of production time spent developing the earlier Purdum version of the film . Most of the production was done at the main Feature Animation studio, housed in the Air Way facility in Glendale, California . A smaller team at the Disney - MGM Studios theme park in Lake Buena Vista, Florida assisted the California team on several scenes, particularly the "Be Our Guest" number . </P> <P> Beauty and the Beast was the second film, after The Rescuers Down Under, produced using CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), a digital scanning, ink, paint, and compositing system of software and hardware developed for Disney by Pixar . The software allowed for a wider range of colors, as well as soft shading and colored line effects for the characters, techniques lost when the Disney studio abandoned hand inking for xerography in the late 1950s . CAPS also allowed the production crew to simulate multiplane effects: placing characters and / or backgrounds on separate layers and moving them towards / away from the camera on the Z - axis to give the illusion of depth, as well as altering the focus of each layer . </P>

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