 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 . 
