The Xerox Orthodox
The Xerox Process was invented at the Walt Disney Studios in 1959. Around that time, every studio in the motion picture industry was having to modernize their styles of filming because of how much cultures around the world were changing at that time. All the gaudy, colorful movie-musicals that they had produced in previous decades had lost their touch with film audiences. The Disney Studios were no exception. They released Sleeping Beauty on January 29th, 1959, and it unfortunately turned out to be a flop. At that point, they considered closing down the entire studio, something they also considered 10 years earlier before Cinderella (1950). When “Beauty,” flopped they had to fire 5% of their employees, and they were in desperate need of a film that could be a hit for the studio. That hit turned out to be 101 Dalmatians (1961), which was the first film produced by the studio completely on “ the Xerox Process” and that played a huge role in making “Dalmatians,” so successful.
This process was invented by Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney’s long-term business partner who was “in charge of special processes at the studio.” He invented a Xerox camera that transferred drawings by animators directly to animation cels. It excluded the “inking” process (painting each cel) thus saving time and money while maintaining the spontaneity of the penciled elements. However, because of its limitations the camera was not able deviate from a black scratchy outline and lacked the fine lavish quality of hand inking. When “Dalmatians” was released, it earned the studio back all the money they had lost on “Sleeping Beauty.” The Xerox Process continued to be used on every film that the studio produced, even after Walt’s death, from The Jungle Book (1967) and The Aristocats (1970) all the way to The Fox and the Hound (1981).
In the 1980s, computer animation was first beginning to make its way into the Hollywood limelight. At that time, the Disney Studios invented the Computer Animation Production System, or CAPS, for short. CAPS allowed them to use computer generated imagery for special sequences in their movies, while the rest of the movie would maintain the Xerox style. It was first applied to The Black Cauldron (1985), then to The Great Mouse Detective (1986), The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and The Lion King (1994). It was also applied to Pocahontas (1995) but with the triumphant success of Toy Story (1995), the very first film produced completely with computer animation, CAPS began to decline. CAPS was applied to every animated film that Disney produced from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) to Home On the Range (2004), but has since then been shut down and disassembled and with the success of films like Frozen (2013) and Zootopia (2016). It is unlikely that CAPS or Xerox will ever make a return to the big screen. (Disney’s more recent hand-drawn animated films, i.e. The Princess and the Frog (2009) and Winnie the Pooh (2011) were produced with more updated version of CAPS entitled “Toon Boom Harmony” computer software.)
Walt Disney Animation has progressed a great deal since Walt was alive. From the Xerox Process, to CAPS, to complete CGI. Today, the CAPS and complete CGI films might resonate with us as a film audience better than the Xerox films, but if Xerox hadn’t been invented, CAPS and complete CGI more than likely never would have come along. The Xerox process paved the way for filming styles we see in animated movies today, so it deserves every movie lover’s respect.
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