Disney: Female Disney Characters Are Difficult To Animate Due To Emotions

[Rumors Rocks]

Female Disney Characters 'Really, Really Difficult' To Animate

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/female-disney-characters-harder-to-animate_n_4069548.html

If over the holidays you decide to indulge your inner child and see the new Disney film "Frozen," keep an eye out for the times when the two female characters -- sisters Elsa and Anna -- appear on-screen together. Do they both look upset? Well, then you are truly witnessing Disney magic.

According to Lino Disalvo, head of animation for the film, female cartoon characters have always been really hard to animate. As he explained in a recent interview at Disney's studios:

Historically speaking, animating female characters are really, really difficult, ’cause they have to go through these range of emotions, but they’re very, very — you have to keep them pretty and they’re very sensitive to — you can get them off a model very quickly. So, having a film with two hero female characters was really tough, and having them both in the scene and look very different if they’re echoing the same expression; that Elsa looking angry looks different from Anna being angry.
Erin Gloria Ryan at Jezebel found a GIF showing some recent female Disney characters' eerily similar faces. No wonder it's a struggle to make their emotions look different -- can we get a little diversity up in here?

 

[Annadesu]

Heya! Professional female animator, over here. Female characters are harder to animate than men. Facial emotions aside, female characters tend to have more hair, and flowing garments, etc. that are a pain in the **** to move realistically. As for characters looking similar... it happens a lot in animation. Ever see Miyazaki films? A lot of the characters look similar in those, as well. It would be nice to have more variety, and they do attempt it sometimes, but with major companies, they tend to stick within the same spectrum of character design for each film (for example, my friends think Naveen from Frog Princess is a Latino version of Prince Eric from Little Mermaid). They do this because when you have the same animators working on movie #1 and movie #2, the production on #2 will go slightly faster because they already got a lot of experience animating similar characters in #1. Some people may not like this, and I understand why, but that is part of it.

 

[Rumors Rocks]

Heya! Professional female animator, over here. Female characters are harder to animate than men. Facial emotions aside, female characters tend to have more hair, and flowing garments, etc. that are a pain in the **** to move realistically. As for characters looking similar... it happens a lot in animation. Ever see Miyazaki films? A lot of the characters look similar in those, as well. It would be nice to have more variety, and they do attempt it sometimes, but with major companies, they tend to stick within the same spectrum of character design for each film (for example, my friends think Naveen from Frog Princess is a Latino version of Prince Eric from Little Mermaid). They do this because when you have the same animators working on movie #1 and movie #2, the production on #2 will go slightly faster because they already got a lot of experience animating similar characters in #1. Some people may not like this, and I understand why, but that is part of it.

Nice post.

 

[buzz25]

i guess thinking about it you can understand why its so much harder i wonder if thats why a lot of earlier films were animals

 

[surferdave]

I'm glad to see that quote in context rather than the omigod he said princesses have to be pretty nonsense.

Thanks for the perspective Anna. BTW, didn't Naveen come before Eric? Then again, I suppose Tangled was in production for so long that Naveen could have been developed from work on Eric.

 

[Mom2six]

I'm glad to see that quote in context rather than the omigod he said princesses have to be pretty nonsense. Thanks for the perspective Anna. BTW, didn't Naveen come before Eric? Then again, I suppose Tangled was in production for so long that Naveen could have been developed from work on Eric.

Eric was from Little Mermaid, long before Princess and the Frog. Flynn Rider is from Tangled.

 

[surferdave]

Eric was from Little Mermaid, long before Princess and the Frog. Flynn Rider is from Tangled.

Thanks, I got the names mixed up! I should remember them better since Disney went to all the trouble to give them names at all in the modern age.