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Dalmatians
Everywhere You Look
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By Dave Smith |
| Dave
Smith has for 30 years been the chief archivist of The
Walt Disney Company, and has authored a number of books,
such as Disney A to Z and Disney: The First 100 Years. |
In the
late 1950s, Walt Disney made a good choice when he selected
Dodie Smith’s popular book about a hoard of dalmatian
puppies on which to base his next animated feature. 101
Dalmatians, released in 1961, was a huge hit, was rereleased
in theaters four times, found a whole new audience on video,
and has led in recent years to two live action feature films
and an animated television series.
With 101 Dalmatians coming on the heels of his most
expensive animated feature, Sleeping Beauty, Walt Disney
realized that he was going to have to find some way to cut
a few corners if he was going to be able to continue producing
animated features. The animation process was becoming more
and more expensive, and since it tied up funds for the three
to four years needed to made a feature, the Disney Studio
was experiencing financial problems.
 The
solution came from an unexpected source. The Haloid Corporation
of Rochester, New York, had perfected a photocopying process
called Xerox, and Walt and some of his technicians figured
that there should be a way that the Xerox process could
be adapted for animation. One of the reasons for a lengthy
animated film production period lay in the need for artists
to painstakingly trace in ink onto celluloids (cels) the
lines of the animators’ pencil drawings. Ub Iwerks,
head of the Studio’s Special Processes Department,
began experimenting, and soon came up with a way to use
a Xerox process to transfer the animators’ drawings
directly to cels. This obviated the need for the inking
process and sped up production greatly. The main reason
why Walt was so anxious to see the process be ready for
101 Dalmatians was a very practical one: One dalmatian
dog has lots of spots; 101 of them have a humungous number.
Hand inking each of those doggie spots would have made this
film prohibitively expensive. The new process gave a whole
new upbeat look to the Disney animated features, and was
utilized in all future ones.
While Walt hesitated making sequels, in the 1990s the new
management of The Walt Disney Company realized that there
was tremendous value in the earlier animated features, and
that they could be used in new and different ways today.
This led to the release in 1996, 35 years after the animated
feature, of a live action 101 Dalmatians starring
Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil. That was followed by an animated
television series in 1997, and a second live action film,
102 Dalmatians, in 2000. It is obvious that dalmatians
have now found their niche at Disney.
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