Did people literally just draw thousands of pictures that looked almost identical and then they stitched them together, like a flip book? How did they do it, and how was it even remotely cost-effective and worth the effort?
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Everyone else has covered the drawing part. Each frame was photographed onto film. Regardless if it was captured on a stills camera or a proper motion picture camera with a single frame function, these images were printed onto either 35mm (higher quality) or 16mm (low quality, think 80s cartoons) film reels that could be played back in a projector or a video converter machine known as a telecine. There was an intermediate printing step for editing and gluing shots together (thats right, glue), but ultimately it ended up on big rolls of positive print film.
Your sound was done magnetically, but for a finished film print could be etched on optically as waveforms that the correct light and sensor in a projector or telecine machine would decode as sound. This was one way to have an end product that could be broadcast and converted into any television format on the planet (remember regions on DVDs? this had to do with these different, non standard video systems).
Eventually video tape workflows came around where material that was telecine transferred from film to a video tape could be edited, though doing so was a pain. Movies were cut mostly on flat bed film editing tables until the Edit Droid digital editing software from Lucas Film arrived on the scene I think in the late 80s. Today that software is known as Avid Media Composer, and it paved the way for Adobe Premier, Final Cut Pro, and even the online editorial component of Davinci Resolve. Heck there would be no iMovie without Edit Droid.
But yeah, really it wasnt till the mid 90s that films (animation or live action) fully moved into what we’d think of as a modern workflow. There were some exceptions, most notably Lucas Films computer animation department otherwise known as Pixar. But even they would have to print their digital movies to film for theatrical distribution (they may have also made IP prints for telecine but by that point tape was an acceptable output option for a broadcast master. I just dont know if they had to laser to film first, then telecine back to tape, or if they could export directly to tape by that point. The industry was insanely analogue even through the 90s. Hopefully someone with direct knowledge can confirm or correct this as it was a bit before my time).
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