Designing 'One Hundred and One Dalmatians'
Plus: news.
Welcome! Glad you could join us. We’re here with another issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter, and this is our plan:
1. On the visual design of Disney’s Dalmatians.
2. Animation newsbits.
With that, let’s go!
1. Modernizing Disney
At the time, it felt unique. There wasn’t another Disney film that looked like it. And, really, that uniqueness survives today: Disney hasn’t quite copied it since.
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) was a huge deal. Reportedly, it was “the first animated feature to earn more than $10 million on its initial release.”1 Which was exciting, because the project was an experiment. For one, the story was set in the mid-century when the mid-century was new. And there’s that design.
Everyone knows the Dalmatians style. This is a world of angular shapes, color blotches and scraggly, spidery lines. It’s a world of drawings — the team made no effort to hide them. That was unusual in Disney features.
The thing was, Walt Disney wasn’t crazy about drawings. As early as 1930, he’d chided his animators for bringing characters to complete stops. “[H]e said that is the worst thing about the kind of animation you guys are doing,” recalled one artist. “Your character goes dead and it looks like a drawing.”2
At Disney’s studio, hard pauses were replaced with constant motion. The illusion of life, in which viewers forget that they’re watching artwork, was the key. His team minimized black outlines for the same reason. “Every line was a soft line and [Walt] was doing his level best to make it like live action,” said artist Ken Anderson, one of the studio’s major people.3 As Anderson explained:
[Walt] hated to see a drawing on a screen. He wanted to see them disguised ... he was the one who really pushed us into cel-paint ink lines, where the ink line is the same color as the area it is encompassing.
By the mid-century, though, Disney’s visual ideas were old-fashioned. Graphic artists like the UPA crew updated animation in the ‘40s and ‘50s. The new wave “embraced the fact that cartoons were, in fact, a visual composition of lines and shapes drawn upon and seen in two dimensions,” according to the book Cartoon Modern.4
Fresh approaches to color, shape and line filled UPA gems like Rooty Toot Toot (1951). A few Disney artists tried to modernize, too, as far as they could.5 And Ken Anderson was one of them. His art direction for One Hundred and One Dalmatians was his biggest coup — achieved, kind of, under his boss’s nose.
The basis of Dalmatians was a children’s novel from the ‘50s, popular in its day. Disney’s studio bought the rights in 1957 — he liked the book. Its author, Dodie Smith, was thrilled. “To be quite honest, I always hoped you might [make a film of my book],” she wrote to Disney after the deal was signed.6
Walt Disney had some involvement in the adaptation. But he was “preoccupied with live-action projects, television programs and theme parks,” wrote historian John Canemaker.7 That was true during much of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Ward Kimball of the Nine Old Men got away with mid-century films like Mars and Beyond for this reason. (“After [Walt] saw them … he sat there with his mouth open,” Kimball noted.)
So it was with Dalmatians. By mid-1958, Ken Anderson was testing all kinds of new stylistic ideas for the project. He was a Snow White veteran, but he wasn’t stuck in a ‘30s sensibility. When he pitched his early plans to Disney, the replies were often vague approval, with a few vague concerns. “Ah, yeah, yeah, you can fool around all you want to,” Anderson recalled hearing at one point.8
At the core of Anderson’s vision was a film “all [in] one style.” Here, unlike in Cinderella and other Disney features, the characters and the backgrounds would visibly belong together — both of them using lines and color.
And the style chosen by the team was a modern one. Anderson admitted to “very definitely” borrowing from the work of Ronald Searle, a major cartoonist of the mid-century, known for his scratchy lines and graphic shapes (Searle even offered him advice). The influence of modern painting, including abstract expressionism, touched the work as well.9
Underpinning the creative changes was a technical one: Anderson wanted to use Xerox on Dalmatians.
In Disney classics like Pinocchio, the audience doesn’t tend to see the animators’ drawings. The studio’s inkers first traced the animation onto transparent plastic cels, which were then photographed. They were masters at this job. “[A]n animator wouldn’t even need to clean up his drawings, because the good inker knew what lines to pick up,” said Disney artist Phyllis Craig.10
Xerox was a cost-saving measure that, on Dalmatians, doubled as an artistic tool. It automated the inking process: the rough, unpolished lines of the animators were converted straight to cel. That was a complex job back then. Craig, an early member of the Xerox department, noted that you “really had to know what you were doing in order to blow the images up and down and get them in the right position.” (Plus, toxic chemicals were involved.)
Although Dalmatians wasn’t the studio’s first use of Xerox, no Disney feature had taken it this far. As Anderson said:
There was no attempt to disguise the lines; I knew they were going to be a half foot across on a big screen, but they were good-looking lines, and [because] they were the animators’ lines, they always had more life than tracings. The animators were high on it; everybody was high on the thing.
It changed the Disney system. Fewer hands touched the animators’ art before it reached the screen, so they “had to draw really clean,” said Craig. It demanded a lot from people like Iwao Takamoto, a top quality-control artist, who noted that some of Disney’s animators were great at movement but not “nearly as strong in the area of drawing.” All of the pencil animation had to be standardized.11
Meanwhile, Xerox had a second use: the backgrounds. Each came in two layers. First was a simple painting. Laid over it was a line-drawn layout, copied to cel via Xerox.
Using lines in backgrounds was daring, and Walt Disney didn’t like the initial tests. His team went ahead anyway. Dalmatians ended up with backgrounds somewhere between realism and the abstraction of UPA. According to layout artist Ray Aragon:
It was demanding. We had to be very realistic and we … had to use one- and two-point perspective. And really make it so perfect with a ruler, with a long straightedge: a t-square or whatever. ... Once we did that and the thing was scientifically perfect, it was too perfect. We had to put a clean sheet of paper over that and do the whole thing over by hand without the use of triangles and rulers. We had to now draw over the rulers and make a finished drawing by hand as carefully as we could, to make it not so perfect. That is where you got the charm of the drawings of One Hundred and One Dalmatians.12
Anderson had a large role in the look of Dalmatians — one crewmember noted that his concept art “set the pace” and “gave flavor to all the picture.” But he didn’t define everything.13 The film was really “a graphic collaboration between numerous artists,” to quote Cartoon Modern.
Another main contributor was Walt Peregoy, picked by Anderson to handle the background colors. He was possibly the most avant-garde painter at Disney in that era, influenced by modern art and UPA. “[T]he reason I was chosen by Ken Anderson,” Peregoy said, “is that if he put me as color stylist, he knew I’d do it, I’d create something, not just another Disney background.”14
It was Peregoy who finalized the backgrounds’ style. Early tests of lines overlaid on paint “looked like a cheap comic book,” according to Ray Aragon. Nothing seemed to work. “Then finally,” Aragon said, “Walt Peregoy took the painting style of Raoul Dufy ... where you ... just ignore the lines and paint over and beyond. It looks like nothing. But when you put the line on the thing, there it is.”
Loose color shapes became pillows, trees, banisters and buildings once the lines were added. And, because the two layers don’t fit together seamlessly, there’s an exciting tension: color and line say slightly different things.
To populate this graphic world, several other artists developed the graphic cast.
The most important character designer was probably Bill Peet, who wrote and storyboarded Dalmatians. His sketches provided the general outlines for Cruella, and Pongo, and more. Peet, a notorious firebrand, griped later that the animators took “credit for my Cruella de Vil and all of the personalities.”15
Like many comments by the original Disney veterans, Peet’s words were partly true and partly bitterness. He was essential, but other artists mattered, too — and plenty acknowledged his role in the film.
Also valuable to the character designs was Tom Oreb (Sleeping Beauty), alongside Milt Kahl and Marc Davis of the Nine. Final say didn’t simply fall to one person. While Kahl’s role was often to polish up Peet’s basic designs, the two of them fought on Dalmatians, specifically over the lead dogs. Peet ultimately won that battle, as animator Andreas Deja has pointed out.16
As Dalmatians went through its years of production, Walt Disney grew a little more aware of what his team was making. His feedback on the style often wasn’t good. Until it was too late, Ken Anderson didn’t understand just how vague Disney’s initial approvals had been. “I realized what a terrific hole I had dug for myself but there was no turning back,” he said.
In the end, Dalmatians looked fantastic to everyone but Disney himself. As Anderson put it, this film ended up being:
... the antithesis of what Walt wanted. He wanted people to believe that these things were not drawings, that these things were actual people. His whole drive had been in that direction. … He didn’t like it at all and he made several remarks that hurt me, because I thought he liked it.
For the success of Dalmatians, Anderson was rewarded with a year-long silent treatment from Disney, and several demotions. “We’re never gonna do another one of those goddamned things like Ken did,” he said at one meeting, with Anderson in attendance. Only toward the end of Disney’s life did they really reconcile over it.17
The era had changed, but Disney’s taste hadn’t. Modernist animation was never a great love of his, even when it netted his studio Oscars and millions. Sometimes, he seemed to tolerate it. Then there were incidents like Dalmatians.
Design-wise, decades passed before the studio made another feature comparable to the level of this one. The conservative swing on The Sword in the Stone (1963) affected even Walt Peregoy’s artwork, which had pushed so many boundaries before.18 Until Disney’s experiments of the ‘90s, Dalmatians looked a bit like a one-off.
Still, even if they weren’t allowed to try again, the artists had pulled it off this time. Dalmatians was “the culmination of the Disney studio’s drive toward modernism,” argued Cartoon Modern, and was “one of the most brazen shifts in aesthetic sensibility during the studio’s history.” It’s up there with stuff like Sleeping Beauty — among the team’s richest-looking films.
2. Newsbits
We lost Roger Allers (76), a Disney legend best known for co-directing The Lion King.
In Germany, animator Sasha Svirsky is bringing out a new film called Unidentified Nonflying Objects. (Longtime readers may know our piece about his one-of-a-kind work.)
Artists Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani won an Oscar last year for In the Shadow of the Cypress. Now, they’re speaking out against the horrors in their home country of Iran.
In America, the documentary Animation Mavericks will tell the tale of UPA, which feels increasingly relevant in 2026.
More and more old episodes of an American classic, Sesame Street, are turning up officially on YouTube. (Thanks to the re:frame guys for pointing this out.)
Studio Heartbreak, an indie team co-founded by folks in America and Canada, had a hit Kickstarter with The Lovers a few years back. That film is now reportedly complete and set for release on YouTube this summer.
In America, Jorge Gutierrez (Maya and the Three) is directing a Speedy Gonzales movie for Warner.
Japan’s government continues to investigate the anime industry. A new report finds that an “overwhelming 89.4% of film directors and staff, along with 52.1% of animators, said they were not satisfied with their current pay.” It sounds like new rules may be coming.
Cartoon Movie, a central event in Europe’s co-production ecosystem each year, has expanded to include Canadian projects in 2026.
Last of all: we looked into the art of animating the world around you.
Until next time!
The quote comes from Charles Solomon, in his section on Dalmatians for The Walt Disney Film Archives: The Animated Movies 1921–1968. One of our most important sources today.
This anecdote was shared in The Illusion of Life.
The in-line quote appears in Walt Disney and Europe, while the block quote directly afterward comes from John Canemaker’s Before the Animation Begins. That second one was key throughout.
Cartoon Modern is another main source for today’s lead story.
One of Disney’s main modernists was Ward Kimball, who discussed his experience a bit in this archived interview, used once or twice. Animator Grim Natwick, who worked at UPA, later explained, “I remember Ward Kimball’s coming over. He was crazy about UPA animation, and he said, ‘I’d come over here to work in a minute if I could afford it.’ ” See Cartoonist Profiles (March 1984).
For information on the purchase of the rights, see the AFI Catalog and the book Dear Dodie.
From Paper Dreams: The Art & Artists of Disney Storyboards.
See The Animated Man, used a few times.
For Searle’s influence on Dalmatians, see They Drew as They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney’s Early Renaissance — a valuable source today. Amid Amidi pointed out the abstract-expressionist elements of Walt Peregoy’s painting in Cartoon Modern.
See Animation Journal (Fall 1996), our source for all of Craig’s quotes.
From Animation Blast #3.
See Walt’s People (Vol. 11), quoted a few times.
From Aragon’s other interview in the 11th volume of Walt’s People.
See Peregoy’s interview in Walt’s People (Vol. 9), also used a few times, alongside the one he did for Animato (Winter 1992).
From Hogan’s Alley. For an example of Peet’s influence on the characters, see Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation, where John Canemaker wrote, “Cruella’s dialogue, basic look and staging are all found in Peet’s boards.” Davis’s involvement in her design is discussed in the same section.
Ken Anderson is seen speaking about their reconciliation in the documentary Redefining the Line: The Making of One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
As noted in They Drew as They Pleased: The Hidden Art of Disney’s Mid-Century Era.
The Dalmatians sketch style really brought that story to life. It was better than live action, it was imagination animated. Those sketchy lines were like the little ghosts that told on each character.
Can’t believe Walt hated it! Man. I really hope Anderson knows, in the end, just how much his work was appreciated. Maybe not by Walt 🥲 but by us 🤍
Actually might rewatch the movie this weekend 🍿
A pity Walt Disney didn't like the look of this film. This and Aristocats caught my attention as a child because of those backgrounds and sketchy lines on characters. Films like Sleeping Beauty and Bambi were wonderful explorations of style and art that I hope comes back to the company