Xerography

Ub Iwerks, a Disney animator, had the idea to modify the Xerox camera in 1959 in order to adapt it so that it could be used for the animation process. He was working on the film One Hundred and One Dalmations (1961) and they ran into the problem with how to animate 99 puppies in a way that wouldn’t be too costly to avoid financial issues that plagued the company. In the end he was able to get the drawn frames printed directly onto cells, however it could only be printed in black lines, which was different then Disney’s previous films which used colored outlines. It also made them use a more cartoonish look then the more realistic style that they had previously. It reduced costs and it would quickly spread to other animation studios. This process is also known as ‘machine tracing’ compared to the previous ‘hand created’ animations.