I love animation history and one of the things that always baffled me was how did animators draw the cars in 101 Dalmatians before the advent of computer graphics?
Any rigid solid object is extremely challenging for 2D artists to animate because if one stray line isnโt kept perfectly in check, the object will seem to wobble and shift unnaturally.
Even as early as the mid 80โs Disney was using a technique where they would animate a 3D object and then apply a 2D filter to it. This practice could be applied to any solid object a character interacts with: from lanterns a character is holding, to a book (like in Atlantis), or in the most extreme cases Cybernetic parts (like in Treasure Planet).
But 101 Dalmatians was made WAY before the advent of this technology. So how did they do the Cruella car chase sequence at the end of the film?
The answer is so simple I donโt know why it didnโt occur to me sooner:
They just BUILT the models and painted them white with black outlines ๐คฃ
That was the trick. Theyโre not actually 2D animated, theyโre stop motion. They were physical models painted white and filmed on a white background. The black outlines become the lineart lines and they just xeroxed the frame onto an animation cel and painted it like any other 2D animated frame.
Thatโs how they did it! Isnโt that amazing? Itโs such a simple low tech solution but it looks so cool in the final product.
