65 years ago to this day as of this writing,
WALT DISNEY STUDIOS released a film to theaters that was at point before it premiered being viewed by the press as either a make or break film because it had been about 2 years since the release of SLEEPING BEAUTY which bombed in the box office due to things like the 1958 recession and the fact that it took the Disney Company almost an entire decade to complete due to disagreements with artists and filmmakers throughout the decade.
And yet, on that fateful Wednesday January 25th 1961, which was exactly 5 days after John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated as 35th President of the UNITED STATES,
DISNEY released this one film that proved, that despite the rumors that the man would abandon animation in the wake of BEAUTY's box office failure in favor of theme parks and live action films, that same man would never abandon his pencil and acetate and remain dedicated to animation even after his own death to lung cancer in 1966.
(Barring replacing India Ink Pens in favor or Ink Toner Cartridges and Lithograph Plates.)
And this film, based on DODIE SMITH'S 1956 Novel, would be released to marvelous reviews and it also helped recouped BEAUTY's lost Production costs.
This film had a very contemporary look compared to all the other films from DISNEY at this point.
And by contemporary, I meant, it was a product of it's time which would be the early 1960s since this film was set in 1960s England.
And this was DISNEY's second film to be set in a modern setting.
DUMBO beat DALMATIANS by over 20 years prior in 1941.
To really accentuate the contemporary look for DALMATIANS when compared to the previous films, even the BACKGROUNDS have that NEW AGE 60s look.
That's not to say, WALTER ELIAS DISNEY himself was not that pleased with the final product.
As I've said in my previous posts about 101 Dalmatians,
This film proved divisive within the company due to the art direction which was under the direction of one KEN ANDERSON.
In the 1960s, things in the animation space were changing for better or for worse.
Due to the fact that by the turn of the 60s, Animation was moving to Television due to taking advantage of the dominant method of watching the medium
Many former businesses that made their earnings with Cartoons that would be shown in theaters would be brought to an abrupt end for at least a little while until the 80s brought a different tack.
So many of these studios had to devise a different method to satiate the audiences needs.
also because of rising costs for both materials and artists' payrolls,
(again we are talking about the Post-1958 recession recovery period)
a new method to quicken the process was in founded and used for great effect:
XEROGRAPHY
I made a previous 2025 Update to my Xerography post which I'll provide a link below so you can get the gist of the whole shish kabab:
XEROGRAHY-The art of Photocopying drawings onto Animation Cels before Digital Animation took over in the early 1990s
But as said before, the Animation for Dalmatians necessitated the need to a way to quicken the process as well as lower the costs on producing the animation cels for the animation.
I've read and heard that the result of XEROGRAPHY for Dalmatians was not just a necessity but also the film's advantage on lowering the costs as well as making the inking much easier for the animators.
Just imagine having to ink the cels and deal with those goddamn spots.
Nobody could ink those spots for every frame by hand without driving yourself mad so Xerox was chosen because the Ink Toners and those Lithograph Plates relieved the stress on those animators.
This also resulted in giving the film a sketchy look that not only looks like an animated comic book but also complimented the film's contemporary 60s feel to the setting.
As said before, this also had an effect on the background art too.
Gone were the days of PAINTERLY TAPESTRY BGs from SLEEPING BEAUTY.
In came these BGs which looked like they came from a COMIC BOOK or a stylized magazine art piece.
How did they pull this off?
They just draw the outline for the BG.
They both get photocopied.
One copy goes to the people who paint the BG
while the other copy goes to ones who XEROX the lines to overlay the line art on the painted BG
Therefore providing a unique look for an animated feature film
But WALT DISNEY himself hated the look of the film.
Why is that?
Well it's because WALT is notorious for being a stickler for detail and sticking true to his word.
He wants absolute perfection in the delicacy of the Hand-Inked Cel as were provided by the women who worked day and night hand-inking the animator's outlines while wearing anti-smudge gloves on their dominant hand.
Using this frame from PETER PAN(1953) for example of
Delicate Hand-Inked Colored Outlines that WALT DISNEY preferred in his work.
But anything post-1958 was dealt with rising costs due to things like the recession and the height of the Cold War preceding the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
So as a compromise, animation had no choice but to make the switch to UB IWERKS' patented XEROX Transfer process which printed the animation frames onto Lithograph plates and then transferred them to clear sheets of acetate celluloid.
But because of the cost of Color Ink Toners in a post-recession recovery environment, only Black Outlines could be afforded until color toners were realized in THE RESCUERS(1977).
So, them lithograph plates settled on these black toners.
But as seen below, the toners often copied the rough pencil outlines, even during cleanup of the animation, and yes, even the erased outlines during said cleanup.
WALT must have been very annoyed about how XEROX can also copy erased mistakes and leave it intact on the cels....
But that's what happens when you use tech that was originally meant for copying business documents and not for animation.
The nine-old men, and many animation fans, however championed this new look because not only does it preserve the animator's outline(though it really is the cleanup artists' line art) which in term makes the line art look more personal, which some fans prefer over India Inked outlines or even digital vector outlines.
(India Inked Line art can be personal but only to the inker)
((Digital Vector Lines can still be personal if there's no algorithm that evens out the lines.))
Another advantage that XEROX had over the previous system was that 3D OBJECTS were now more malleable to create in 2D Animation....
Not in a CGI sense since Computers at the time were still the size of a walk-in closet and required a teletype terminal to communicate,
But rather in a Photography type of sense.
If you've seen how objects like CRUELLA's Car move around like a CG Object, then you know that how they actually pull that off was through the use of PHOTOGRAPHY.
First, the car is drawn as if it were being a design for a car company,
Then the drawings are passed down to the builders who construct that car with cardboard sheets,
And then the car is brought in to a Blank set.
And the frames required for Cruella's Car are shot using a Live-Action Camera but shot one frame at a time
Some people might think this is cheating because the car isn't drawn FRAME-BY-FRAME like some people would prefer.
But building a CAR made of cardboard was not only a Novel Idea but it was also economical since it not only allowed the car to be 3D but also to retain a level of Rigidity on the outer frame of the car which is something that can't be done by hand due to the amount of slight motion a hand-drawn lineart can be.
Sure, the Cardboard 3D Vehicles also have some outline shimmering but that's a fault of the photographic exposure of the cameras used for said photography.
The only thing that's still considered hand-drawn was the painting of the car because the car had to go through the same process of Xerox like the characters do so acrylic paint is still used for the car.
The same technique for vehicles would be used again for things like...
EDGAR's Motorcycle with Sidecar in THE ARISTOCATS(1970)
MADAME MEDUSA'S Swamp-mobile in THE RESCUER(1977)
WIDOW TWEED & AMOS SLADE's Cars in THE FOX & THE HOUND(1981)
(Which for some reason I can't find images right now.)
(Looks like it's Avermedia Captures for me again.)
All that CARDBOARD XEROX came to an end starting with MOUSE DETECTIVE as it was more malleable to print out WIREFRAMES onto paper before XEROGRAPHY.
One prime example CG WIREFRAME printouts that are used with Vehicles was with FAGIN's Motorcycle in OLIVER & COMPANY(1988)
101 Dalmatians is famous enough to have had admirers.
Amongst them is SIMPSONS creator MATT GROENING,
Right down to making an episode about GREYHOUND PUPPIES
& yes,
even the late AKIRA TORIYAMA was a fan of the film.
In fact, 101 Dalmatians is so famous, that it spawned a franchise.
A live-action remake that spawned a revolution in remaking animated films into live-action for better or worse,
Brian Griffin wasn't kidding when he said
Glenn Close was VERY MEAN in this movie!
An animated Tv series created by DOUG Creator JIM JINKINS,
another TV Series animated by the Canadian ATOMIC CARTOONS here in Vancouver.
Several Video Games & Spinoff movies & TV Shows are there to complete the package but the list would have been long and dry.
One can't deny that this film managed to be viewed as the most important of all animated films due to it's influences both to other creators and through it's way of navigating economics in the relative start of the 1960s.
