Animating female characters is “really, really difficult” because
you have to “keep them pretty” while they go through “a range
of emotions”?
Oh, come on.
That’s
what the head of animation for Disney’s Frozen said
in an
interview this
week. Not great PR, particularly since Frozen features
two female lead characters who bear a suspicious resemblance to one
of Disney’s other recent princess characters, Rapunzel. The full
quote reads:
“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.
No wonder people are linking this statement with a GIF comparing Anna and Elsa of Frozen, and the main character in Tangled.
Also,
Disney fans have already noticed a lot of differences between Frozen
and its fairytale inspiration, Hans Christian Andersen's Snow
Queen.
The question is: Is the apparent “difficulty” of animating female
characters to blame?