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drawing girls is hard. Let's go shopping.
Oct. 16th, 2013 01:05 pmhttp://voice.fan.tv/2013/10/07/frozen-animating-disneys-newest-musical/
He added, “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 (Kristen Bell) being angry.”
And that's the statement that apparently set off a shitstorm.
My contribution to the shitstorm is;
This runs counter to my experience as an illustrator/cartoonist. About the least helpful thing when drawing women is trying to make sure they're always pretty no matter what the expression. I've done this too many times to keep track of, I still do it, and the moment I start thinking I need to keep my drawing pretty, I'm making this stiff lifeless thing, a pretty girl mask rather than a pretty girl. It's way better to put expression first and risk having an ugly or masculine looking face because that's always better narrative than a pretty girl mask. If all your pretty girls are the same pretty girl you've got Danger Girls which I mean, I loved, but that was the weakest part of the whole comic.
These are people who are 'way, 'way better than I am; heck, a fair number of animators are pretty girls and know very intimately what angry pretty girl faces look like. By definition pretty women are in front of the microphone acting and they're gonna be taking cues from them anyway. Glen Keane could do this in his sleep. It's hard to believe that this is actually a technical challenge for people this much better than me.
He added, “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 (Kristen Bell) being angry.”
And that's the statement that apparently set off a shitstorm.
My contribution to the shitstorm is;
This runs counter to my experience as an illustrator/cartoonist. About the least helpful thing when drawing women is trying to make sure they're always pretty no matter what the expression. I've done this too many times to keep track of, I still do it, and the moment I start thinking I need to keep my drawing pretty, I'm making this stiff lifeless thing, a pretty girl mask rather than a pretty girl. It's way better to put expression first and risk having an ugly or masculine looking face because that's always better narrative than a pretty girl mask. If all your pretty girls are the same pretty girl you've got Danger Girls which I mean, I loved, but that was the weakest part of the whole comic.
These are people who are 'way, 'way better than I am; heck, a fair number of animators are pretty girls and know very intimately what angry pretty girl faces look like. By definition pretty women are in front of the microphone acting and they're gonna be taking cues from them anyway. Glen Keane could do this in his sleep. It's hard to believe that this is actually a technical challenge for people this much better than me.
