The Great Mouse Detective (first released on July 2, 1986), known as Basil, the Great Mouse Detective in the United Kingdom, is the 26th animated film produced by the Walt Disney Company.
Based on the children's story Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus, it draws heavily on the tradition of Sherlock Holmes with a heroic mouse who consciously emulates the detective; Titus named the main character after actor Basil Rathbone, who is best remembered for playing Holmes in film (and whose voice, sampled from the Red-Headed League[1], was the voice of Holmes in this film, 19 years after his death). The main characters are all mice and rats, who are living in London, England.
The movie is notable for its early use of computer generated imagery; and against popular belief, it was not the first animated film to use CGI animation (The Black Cauldron was). For a chase scene that takes place in the interior of a clock, the movements of the clock's gears were produced as wire-frame graphics on a computer and traced onto animation cels. The characters were then animated by hand over these cels and the characters' completed cels placed on top of them.
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