Why were more cartoons in Technicolor than movies were in early days?

That is a very good question!

 

From Wikipedia:

Seeing the potential in full-color Technicolor, Disney negotiated an exclusive contract for the use of the process that extended to September 1935.[19] Other animation producers, such as the Fleischer Studios and the Ub Iwerks studio, were shut out – they had to settle for either the two-color Technicolor systems or use a competing process such as Cinecolor.

Flowers and Trees was a success with audiences and critics alike, and won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. All subsequent Silly Symphonies from 1933 on were shot with the three-strip process. One Silly Symphony, Three Little Pigs (1933), engendered such a positive audience response that it overshadowed the feature films with which it was shown. Hollywood was buzzing about color film again. According to Fortune magazine, "Merian C. Cooper, producer for RKO Radio Pictures and director of King Kong (1933), saw one of the Silly Symphonies and said he never wanted to make a black-and-white picture again."

Although Disney's first 60 or so Technicolor cartoons used the three-strip camera, an improved "successive exposure" process was adopted circa 1937. This variation of the three-strip process was designed primarily for cartoon work: the camera would contain one strip of black-and-white negative film, and each animation cel would be photographed three times, on three sequential frames, behind alternating red, green, and blue filters (the so-called "Technicolor Color Wheel", then an option of the Acme, Producers Service and Photo-Sonics animation cameras).[20] Three separate dye transfer printing matrices would be created from the red, green, and blue records in their respective complementary colors, cyan, magenta and yellow.

Successive exposure was also employed in Disney's "True Life Adventure" live-action series, wherein the 16mm Kodachrome Commercial principal photography element was first duplicated onto a 35mm fine-grain SE negative element in one pass of the 16mm element, thereby reducing wear on the relatively small 16mm element and also eliminating registration errors between colors. The live-action SE negative thereafter entered other Technicolor processes and were incorporated with SE animation and three-strip studio live-action, as required, thereby producing the combined result.

 

So evidently Mr Disney bought the rights to the process for a limited number of years, but technology also improved to the point that all these seperate negatives were no loger needed as all the primary colors were now within one layered film strip. This enabled producers to use technicolor cameras on sets for live action, instead of frame by frame hand drawn cels.

 

And now technology has advanced even further giving us the opportunity to create and film series like the one below, from one's own home. No movie studio involved.

@Candy Gal:

 

@wilsjane ...and to think that some people do not believe in science, yet there it is in front of them every day...

 

OK, I watched the entire thing. It was amazing.

In the past I ran four color Heidelberg KORD printing presses (sheet fed) with 36 inch width paper for a few years.

Even with four separate color heads each complete with ink rollers, ink trays, impression cylinders the size of car engines; and capable of 10,000 sheets per hour throughput it was not as complicated as this movie projection system.

I did show films with a two projector system in the local arts center on Saturday nights. Back in the 1970's, and it was much simplified from what you showed. But each feature length film had several reels.