Thursday, April 3, 2025

Starting right off the bat, most of the storyboard is almost indentical to the final product, with some changes and cuts that did make it past the animation stages. What's more intriguing though is how well the animatic is made from Arutea's drawing style. At rare ocassions, we get to see characters that up-close drawn in higher detail, as shown with Cruella as she peeks under the table.

And when necessary, lighting and shading detail is drawn in, especially during close-ups, while characters like Dante is given a darker shade of grey to stand out more. This adds to the level of depth and dimension.

And now we'll adress the most exciting part of the storyboard: There's a lot to delve into, and even fans of the original 101 Dalmatians might pick up on this. There's this deleted scene in where after Delilah flings Cruella's purse back at her face, Doug darts at Cruella and practically bites her where the sun doesn't shine!

And this is where the connections between 101 Dalmatian Street and the original One Hundred-One Dalmatians is strongly highlighted. After Cruella kicks Doug off of her, she says this line right here: "You're just as feral as the last two mutts." 

This is evidence once again that the people behind 101 Dalmatian Street went hard in working to connect the show to the original animated film canon as much as possible.

Last up, we see what went on in the original storyboard compared to the final version: Doug charges at Cruella once again to try to tackle her, only for her to dodge out of the way, which of course makes Doug collide into her Wife. And honestly this scene would've made the situation a lot more intense, and maybe a little bit more comical.

And that is it! It's honestly a shame that the scenes showed here never made into the final version. It would've certainly added a lot more excitement to the 101DS fans, but again, scenes tend to get cut, along with some dialogue in order to fit into the episode 10-minute time frame. But this storyboard really would've added to the level of continuity between the show and the original animated film. And we're proud of Arutea for her work, regardless of it.