INK, PAINT DON'T CUT IT TODAY.

Byline: - Sandra Barrera

In 1990, when Disney released ``The Rescuers Down Under,'' it marked the beginning of the end of a process traditionally known as ink and paint - hand painting scenes one frame at a time. Much of the children's adventure was colored by computer.

Prior to that, says Thomas Schumacher, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation and Television Animation, the last Disney film that was done this way, with a proper ink-and-paint department, was ``The Little Mermaid.'' This mean either every frame gets its own drawing, which is 1/24th of a second, or every other one, which is 1/12th of a second. Each frame would then be hand-painted.

Then the 1993 Universal blockbuster ``Jurassic Park,'' with its realistic-looking dinosaurs, took a leap forward in the use of animation in live-action films. After that, studios began thinking about different ways to use animation.

Now, Warner Bros. is gearing up for the July 4 release of ``Cats & Dogs,'' a film that is rapidly reflecting the forward thinking in features these days - live action combined with animatronics and computer animation.

The film, starring Jeff Goldblum and Elizabeth Perkins, is being billed as `` 'Babe' meets 'The Matrix.' '' It also utilizes some 27 dogs and 33 cats as well as the voices of Alec Baldwin, Michael Clarke Duncan and Susan Sarandon. The Henson Creature Shop is behind the animatronics.

Inside an editing room on the Burbank lot, director Larry Guterman pulls up an unfinished scene. On the monitor, a beagle pup is having the kibble beaten out of him by a rogue gang of ninja cats.

Some of the sequences show the cats unleashing killer kung fu blows as simply rendered flat-brown computer-animated place holders going through the motions. Animators are in the process of replacing the drab templates with true-to-life replica Devon Rex cats.

Bill Kroyer, animation director for Rhythm and Hues, is working on the project and has developed new software for the muscles and fur.

The deceptively adorable, fluffy, white Mr. Tinkles required some 14 million individual hairs on his computer-animated reproduction to make him look authentic.

``You're always writing new software because people keep coming up with new challenges and visuals that have never been done before,'' he says.

And it's always to the delight of filmmakers like Guterman.

``I'll admit, there's a bit of the wow factor in all of this,'' says Guterman. ``It's like in 'Toy Story': When people leave, the toys come to life.

``When people leave in 'Cats & Dogs,' '' he says, ``the animals suddenly have the awareness of humans and have developed all this crazy technology and are engaged in this high-tech battle that we humans are completely kept in the dark about.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) A scene from Warner Bros.' July 4-debuting ``Cats & Dogs,'' an example of computer-driven animation.

(2) Larry Guterman, director of ``Cats & Dogs,'' says it's hard not to be impressed by new digital-animation tools. ``I'll admit, there's a bit of the wow factor in all of this.''

Gus Ruelas/Staff Photographer.