Disney’s live-action Cruella employed a plethora of dalmatians, but how much of the dogs onscreen were CGI and were some of them real? Cruella doesn’t actually kill any dalmatians in the film, but there is a cheeky line of dialogue that suggests the titular character used their fur to fashion herself a coat. The film sets up the origin story for the deliciously villainous character, who was first introduced in the 1961 animated film One Hundred and One Dalmatians. And, of course, dalmatians are involved as well.

Several dogs (not just dalmatians) made appearances throughout the film and, while there weren’t as many as in the animated movie or the 1996 live-action adaptation, Cruella brought the dogs to life through a combination of real and digitally rendered canines. For the close-ups of the dogs, director Craig Gillespie used actual dogs in the scenes, including one that saw a puppy sitting in a young Cruella’s lap. However, all of the dogs seen in the final edit of the film are half real and half created by CGI, the effects of which are realistic enough to not be able to tell the difference between them.  

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For the real dogs, there were about six trainers on the set of Cruella. According to Gillespie, dalmatians were especially hard to work with because their attention span was limited and they became rather rambunctious and fidgety when in a scene with other dogs. To that end, it’s not surprising why half of the scenes with the dogs were CGI, which allows the filmmakers to adjust and make the dogs do whatever the scene required them to do. Using CGI for half the dogs helped because the real ones weren’t very predictable. 

However, because there were also real dogs used in Cruella, the visual effects team didn’t have to work entirely from scratch to create all of the pups. Having a mixture of real and digital canines onscreen gives the film a sense of authenticity while also serving as a reminder that these dogs are obviously being utilized in a fictitious world. What’s more, Cruella’s CGI dogs hail from the same visual effects company, MPC, that worked on the live-action The Lion King, which is a big part of the reason why they look so real. Some dogs were completely digital, though it’s hard to tell as much in the movie. 

Cruella highlights the fact that the character — whose origins position her as less of a cruel villain — is not necessarily anti-dog. In fact, she has a pup of her own. However, the dalmatians, commanded by the Baroness, are responsible for the death of Cruella’s mother and this is the scene where the digital effects are most apparent, perhaps because this is also where the canines are running really fast and must do so for the scene to work. The CGI process took a year so as to get every dog in perfect shape for the final cut of the film. While working on the effects and with real dogs sounds incredibly tedious, it largely turned out for the best in the end.

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