The Spots That Saved an Empire: A Look Back at 101 Dalmatians (1961)
In 1961, Walt Disney was in a tight spot. Sleeping Beauty (1959) had been a massive financial flop, and the studio was on the verge of closing its animation department entirely. Enter a litter of spotted pups and a revolutionary new technology that changed the face of animation forever. A Radical New Look
: Animators didn't just guess the spots; they estimated there are exactly 6,469,952 spots throughout the film. An Icon of Evil: Cruella de Vil
: This tech kept the energy of the animators' original pencil lines, giving the film a sketch-like, contemporary feel.
: This was the first feature to use the Xerox process to transfer drawings directly to cels.