Post #3. There are 101 Dalmatians
Reading through the book “Of Mice and Magic“ by Leonard Marltin, I came upon the chapter about Walt Disney. I am not going to pretend that I know a lot about animation, which is why I’m taking this class, but I found a couple things about the movie 101 Dalmatians interesting. I thought that in 101 Dalmatians, each dalmatian was drawn by hand, but actually this was one of the first major uses of the Xerox process by Disney studios. If it weren’t for the Xerox Process Disney would not be able to produce films like 101 Dalmatians in such a cheap and timely manner.
101 Dalmatians was relased in 1961 right after one of Disney’s greatest hits Sleeping Beauty. During this time period Disney was trying to go towards a type of realism in their human characters. “Disney told his artists to make the characters as real as possible near-flesh-and-blood,” (Maltin , 74). Though 101 Dalmatians major stars were the Dalmatians and not mostly human characters like in Sleeping Beauty one will never forget Cruella de Vil and her obsession with a dalmatian coat. He mixed these real human characteristics and background with fantasy (I mean how can a dog have 101 dalmatian puppies).
What I wanted to talk about is how Disney and his animators managed to get 101 Dalmatians onto the screen. This movie used the Xerox Process, which saved on time and money. This replaced hand inking into a cell by printing the drawings directly into cells for the animators. This process includes 7 steps which include charging, exposure, development, transfer, separation, fixing, and cleaning. This process seems complex and it is to me a novice at technology, but the point is they used this process to reproduce 101 dalmatians in a scene. There would be no possible way to produce a film like this without the use of the Xerox.
To sum it all up is a quote from a web site called The History of Disney Animation, “Ub Iwerks…had modified a Xerox camera to transfer animators’ drawings directly to cells, thus eliminating the inking process and preserving much of the spontaneity of the pencil line. This saved time and money and had a major effect on the way Disney animation would look for the next thirty years.”
I commented on Michael Griffith’s post and Joe Gayk’s Post
Sources
Maltin, Leonard. Of Mice and Magic. Revised. New york, NY: Penguin Group, 1987. 74-75. Print.
Websites included; Disney Archives, Wikipedia, and The History of Disney Animation
I agree with your point in this post. If it werent for this process it would have been difficult for Disney to put out films as quick as they did before computer animation. If this process was not created it is hard to tell what movies may have never been because of time and finacial restraints.
By: Mike Griffith on February 8, 2010
at 5:48 pm
Yes! Xerox Process most definitely allowed for the improved speed in releasing films like 101 Dalmatians and allowed for even more movies to come out. The one thing that I do feel is sad though, is the way that the Xerox process took away a bit of the ink fun of the Disney films. The ink looks great, but it cannot be denied that Xerox made Disney’s golden age that much better. That and this movie may have had to be entitled “the 10 dalmatians” if each had to be hand inked.
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