Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.014 Family Reunion

Everyone noticed that Mark Mayerson has the title sequence up as mosaic? Well, check it out!

As to the sequence at hand...:
Directed by Woolie Reitherman, laid out by Basil Davidovich. Animation Frank Thomas (pups, Pongo and Perdita), Blaine Gibson and Ted Berman (all dogs, in action scenes), Don Lusk and Hal King (pups), John Lounsbery (Colonel the sheepdog and the Baduns), Cliff Nordberg (Sgt. Tibs the cat), Julius Svendsen (Captain the horse), Bill Keil, Dick Lucas, John Sibley, Ambi Paliwoda (Baduns) and Dan MacManus (effects: cars & trucks).

This sequence shows clearly a divide in assignments between acting and action animators, with Frank Thomas in the first group, and e.g. Gibson, Lusk, Lucas and Paliwoda in the other.

This final draft of 7/26/60...

A Few Dalmatian Statistics...

More drafts shortly - here first some data!
Animation on the approx. 6,500 feet of Prod. 2110, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, started with the Music Room pickup of Gerry Geronimi's Seq.001, The Opening, on 3/7/58. Animation on this 685 ft. sequence started 4/22/58, it was scheduled ready for Touch-Up 6/26/59 and ready for Xerox 8/28/59, which means that Reitherman's 345 ft. Seq.005 (Puppies Stolen) and Luske's 367 ft. Seq.004 (Puppies Watch TV) were in Xerox before it, though animation on them started 10/15/58 and 11/28/58 and were ready for Xerox 6/19/59 and 7/17/59 respectively..

Geronimi's Seq.003 (Puppies Arrive) was actually the second sequence started on, 4.5 months after Seq.001, on 7/25/58 and was ready for Xerox 9/25/59, so it took 14 months from hand-out to OK-for-Xerox. After this, the sequences ready for Xerox were - in this order - .008 Puppies Discovered (approx. 9 months in animation and touch-up), .006 Dogs Make Decision (8 months), .013 Escape From Hell Hall (7 months), .002 Introduction of Cruella (5 months) and .012 Cruella at Hell Hall (7.5).

The last scenes of the film were scheduled to be out of animation and ready for Touch-Up 3/11/60, ready for Xerox on 6/17/60, Final Daily OK 8/12/60, Negative Cut 8/26/60 and Answer Print struck 9/23/60.

Note that most of the above data was scheduled and prepared 5/22/59, and just how much "looking into the future" that encompassed - or how much was added later on to the same sheet - is not known. What we do know is that the film premiered as One Hundred and One Dalmatians 1/25/61...

Bambi's Mother is Alive!

Michael J. Ruocco shows on his blog "For the Birds" that Bambi's mother was not REALLY killed brutally by hunters! As an actress, she does not progress much, but the role she does play (through animator Art Elliott) has seen more Disney features than any other character - if we only count straight re-uses, for else Goofy would "win."

Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.013 Escape from Hell Hall

Directed by Woolie Reitherman, laid out by Basil Davidovich.

Animation by Cliff Nordberg, John Lounsbery, Dick Lucas, John Sibley and Bill Keil (Baduns), Hal King and Ted Berman (puppies and cat), Ambi Paliwoda and Bob McCrea (puppies), (Jack) Bailey (puppy stampede), Blaine Gibson and Frank Thomas (Pongo & Perdita). Another Reitherman action sequence.

This final draft of 7/26/60...

Prod. 2110 (101 Dalmatians) - Seq.012 Cruella at Hell Hall

Directed by Gerry Geronimi and Ham Luske (assisted by Ed Hansen, who showed my family and myself around the second floor of the animation building 8/14/1978), laid out by Don Griffith. Animation by Eric Larson, Julius Svendsen, Cliff Nordberg, John Sibley, Art Stevens, Marc Davis, Eric Cleworth, Les Clark and Hal King, with effects by Jack Boyd.

Note the mention of Live Action - these were the model shots as referred to in the Making Of on disc 2 of the new Dalmatians DVD set. We used this technique on our 1986 feature film Valhalla. Nowadays, of course, one would use a computer.
Note also that some scenes were subdivided by the person checking for BGs in 1964. Probably because this is not a final draft.

This 2nd draft of 11/27/59...