Inside the Impossible Anatomy of a Disney Princess

[Agravaine]

This should be useful for the artists among us, especially those with art as their bread and butter. Shouldn't be any huge surprises for anyone who followed that Merida as a Disney Princess business...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/the-impo ... m=buzzfeed

[cowmuflage]

I did not like the Vs "real women silhouette" as well a lot of people have different body shapes then that. I'd fit more closely to the Disney one >.>

I mean thats why in Life drawing you do so many different shaped people.

[Rhyela]

And I basically am a heavier version of the Disney princess. My waist is really pinched in. However, I do have smaller breasts and wide hips.

Like cowmu said, we really can't group women into the "average" since our body sizes vary so wildly. But it is amazing to see how all the Disney princesses look so much alike. I suppose that's what makes them familiar and recognizable, though. I still love Disney!

[cowmuflage]

Fun fact: Only the most skilled and veteran animators are allowed to animated the princesses in Disney movies. I learned that from a talk we had from a veteran Disney guys a few years back at school.

[Agravaine]

I've been pretty disenchanted with the whole "average" physique thing for a while myself since one does see all kinds of body types out there. I think the first time I saw "scientific" pictures of the average man and wonan it was obvious that the book was for caucasians... and I'd already seen the Voyager images of a supposedly average man and woman.

In the 80s there was an article in Life magazine of what humans would evolve into... I've already seen people who look like that (basically tubby, squat, short-limbed...), but again, the article was based on caucasians.

That got me to thinking... what does the average human look like? A mix? A tubby Taylor Lautner/Moon Bloodgood/Tia Carrere? So I searched it up and I realized I'd already seen it, and it's not average at all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B2xOvKFFz4

"Typical is relative." Couldn't have said it better.

[Nevish]

Honestly, it has more to do with conveniently placing an instantly recognizable silhouette. Disney princesses all have the same body shape because they wouldn't be Disney princesses without it. If you lined them all up, they'd basically seamlessly merge into one another, especially when you remove other details like hair or clothing. It's disappointing in the sense that a company with that powerful an artistic resource under its thumb could do way more to make its heroines distinct, but it doesn't.

[zedxrgal]

Along with what Nevish said it's all about being flat out lazy in my opinion. It's so quick an easy now just to load the same style into the animation software and slap some hair and an outfit on it and give it a name. Sad really considering Disney is capable of so much more. I still love their movies but seeing this makes them blah for me now. Never clicked till now they were the exact same. Bummer.

[cowmuflage]

Along with what Nevish said it's all about being flat out lazy in my opinion. It's so quick an easy now just to load the same style into the animation software and slap some hair and an outfit on it and give it a name. Sad really considering Disney is capable of so much more. I still love their movies but seeing this makes them blah for me now. Never clicked till now they were the exact same. Bummer.

Um you don't "load" styles into animation software you draw things in the animation programs (unless you are puppet animating) like Flash and Toon boom and it's not necessarily quicker or more easy. Sorry I had to clear things up it's being picky I know but I am an animator myself XD

[Nevish]

Along with what Nevish said it's all about being flat out lazy in my opinion. It's so quick an easy now just to load the same style into the animation software and slap some hair and an outfit on it and give it a name. Sad really considering Disney is capable of so much more. I still love their movies but seeing this makes them blah for me now. Never clicked till now they were the exact same. Bummer.

Um you don't "load" styles into animation software you draw things in the animation programs (unless you are puppet animating) like Flash and Toon boom and it's not necessarily quicker or more easy. Sorry I had to clear things up it's being picky I know but I am an animator myself XD

Well, you can also be trained to perfectly copy from a pre-made template, so in a way it's stylistic loading. There's also a few programs that let you assemble "parts" like a paper doll for comics, although you need to actually make these "parts" to use them in the first place. The artist of the webcomic CTRL+ALT+DEL did this for a while, then stopped after he went public with it and got a looooot of flak.

[cowmuflage]

You can always tell those comics from comics that don't use that. They tend to be lifeless and stiff.

Puppet animating is when you build a puppet with all the faces/mouthshapes/everything you need and just swap them and stuff and can make it quicker to do but it's not a lazy way of animating like so many people say it is. I've done it before and it's a lot of work, more so when a puppet can have 100's of layers!

But as far as I know Disney does most of their shows by hand on pen and paper (well unless it's a 3d show ). I was told Gravity Falls was done in flash but it's not. The short it was based on was tho.

[Nevish]

Disney just recently shut down their 2-D studios due to lack of interest. The short film "Paper Man" proves that 3-D tech can now be used to effectively convey a 2-D animation style, and there are numerous animation companies that make their own tech from pre-existing programs like Flash. 2-D animation has basically been relegated to diehards, although a lot of anime studios are still diligently clinging to it for the sake of aesthetics.

Point still stands that Disney has basically copped out. The heroine of the upcoming film "Frozen" is virtually indistinguishable from Rapunzel of Tangled. On the flip side, Dreamworks is slowly improving into an actual likeable company that uses diverse character modeling, tells unique stories, and tries to reach out to a wider audience, although their films are still very hit or miss in terms of overall quality. Disney is always stellar, but they've become so locked into their style that every film they've come out with in the last few years is like a glossy, beautiful cake that's all icing, but no substance.

[cowmuflage]

Not really most of the studios here to a mixture of everything. So I would not say it's just for "diehards". Anything done on Flash or Toon boom is 2D. Adventure time,Regular show and Avatar just to name a few are hand done.

[Nevish]

Oh yeah, definitely. But I thought it was in reference to actual hand-drawing with animation cels.

[cowmuflage]

I proberly should of been more clear XD