Which Disney animated feature was the first to use xerography (xerographic copying)?

Which Disney animated feature was the first to use xerography? The answer is 101 Dalmatians.

Released in 1961, One Hundred and One Dalmatians was the first Disney feature to rely on xerography throughout its animation process. Instead of having inkers trace every animator’s pencil drawing onto a cel, a Xerox camera transferred the drawings directly, preserving the artists’ rough black lines and greatly reducing labor and cost.

The process was especially useful for this story because the film contains dozens of spotted dogs and, in some scenes, enormous groups of puppies. Reproducing all those markings by hand would have been expensive and time-consuming. The resulting scratchy outlines also gave the movie its distinctive modern, graphic look, influenced by art director Ken Anderson and cartoonist Ronald Searle.

A common mix-up is that xerography was not invented specifically for this film. Disney tested it in Sleeping Beauty, and Goliath II was the first Disney production to make full use of it. 101 Dalmatians was the landmark feature that adopted the technique comprehensively and helped establish it as Disney’s standard method for hand-drawn animation for decades.