Recently CD-i member Нигракоптер, an enthusiast in the CD-i Zelda community, interviewed one of the animators, Denis Chernov, who
was working as a contractor at Animation Magic in Russia. He was
responsible for animating the cutscenes in the games Link: Faces of Evil
and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon. CD-i member Dopply translated and shared it with us. You can find the original interview here. It gives some nice
insight about the circumstances at Animation Magic and the link with
Russian animators who were responsible for the animations of the
cutscenes. Denis Chernov explains how these were made: "We had to draw
on tracing paper, then put it under a giant video camera, which made the
[digital] frame, part of which was way too bright and part of which was
almost completely black. Then we had to edit it pixel-by-pixel and draw
the lines on the computer in some hideous program. Which, by the way,
wasn’t for Windows or DOS." Denis explained remembers to have worked on
scenes with Duke Onkled, pictured above. The animation process seems to
have a lot of freedom: "They just gave you the character designs and the
voiceover and then you could do whatever you please."Enjoy the whole interview!
[Thanks, Нигракоптер, Dopply, Zelda CD-i Community]