WTF: Do All Animated Female Disney Characters Have The Same Face?
Leave it to the Internet to find controversy in the most unlikely place. Specifically, the faces of Disney characters. A few blogs have noticed that in the past several years, specifically in Disney and Pixar's computer animated films, animators have used the exact same face shape for every single female character. That's opposed to the male characters who have wildly varied facial constructions. What's up with that? Check out the animated female Disney characters below.
These images are from the Every Flavored Bean Tumblr. Here's the basic idea. These are the faces of all the male and female characters in recent Disney movies.
And then, you do a simple trace on the jaw bone and nose
The women are all almost exactly the same while the men are super different. Is this on purpose? Or does Disney just have a very specific idea of animated beauty?
For an answer to that, we go to a quote from Lino DiSalvo, the head of animation on Frozen:
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.
Wait, doesn't everyone look different from everyone? Aren't we all expressive? I guess, in a way, men sometimes have more pronounced features, which could make animating easier. That still doesn't cover the way all these faces look the same.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think this is just a coincidence or something more?