I think it is always interesting to compare preparatory work with the final illustration, especially when you are looking at art from Marc Davis. These color images are stunning, but it's the pencil sketches that tell you how Marc approached the research for his characters and compositions.
These images are as good as it gets when it comes to staging ideas for personalities and environments.
The pencil sketches were pinned onto a board and photographed in August of 1960. Marc had finished work on Cruella De Vil, but 101 Dalmatians wouldn't be in theaters until January of 1961.
I see the same confidence with which Marc animated Cruella displayed here in the designs for Chanticleer, which was hopefully going to be the next animated feature.
Disney anthropomorphic animals enter a modern aera, more designy and sophisticated than anything from the Golden Age of Animation.
To this day they cry out to be animated…as moving drawings.
