'Dalmatians' hit by full 'Thunderbolt'

The 1961 Disney classic 101 Dalmatians made clear that Dalmatian puppies love their TV dog hero Thunderbolt.

After more than 50 years, the pups are finally getting the brave pooch's whole tale.

Disney animators have completed Thunderbolt's entire show within the movie, as imagined by writer and story artist Bill Peet, who died in 2002. Only a small segment made it into Dalmatians in an iconic scene which featured all the puppies huddled around the TV.

"But the show goes to a commercial in the movie and we never knew how it wraps up," says Floyd Norman, 79, an original Dalmatians animator who worked on the new project. "Now we get a chance to see Thunderbolt do all of his heroics."

The Further Adventures of Thunderbolt will be a bonus feature on the fully restored 101 Dalmatians when the movie is released Tuesday for the first time on Blu-ray.

David Bossert, the restoration artistic supervisor, said researchers in Disney's animation library unearthed sketches for the full Thunderbolt show, which had never been executed for story reasons.

"It was cut back — it wasn't something that was going to further the story about the Dalmatians," says Bossert. "It's wonderful to pull out this little gem."

This meant more scenes of smiling Thunderbolt and his horse-thief nemesis Dirty Dawson. The team also incorporated a Western sheriff based on sketches.

"We were able to flesh him out," says Norman, who finished the design. "Clearly, I wanted the sheriff to be an Old Western hero, stoic and determined. Sort of like a Gary Cooper."

But the dog is the true hero as he comes to the rescue to stirring music composed specifically for the feature, based on the film's original score by George Bruns. The team also animated on paper with pencils to replicate the original movie's look for the feature, which runs almost three minutes.

"One exciting thing about this project was to be able to do it old school, to go back to a technique we hadn't used in decades," says Norman. "So we had to find animators who knew how to animate with pencil and paper and give it that vintage look. The animation looks pretty much the same way it would have looked had it been animated in 1960."

Norman doesn't expect to be revisiting his spotted puppies again anytime soon.

"It was great to have the opportunity to go back and finish," says Norman. "Dalmatians is finally completed. We can call it a wrap now."