Disney draws from the past for animated film
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In Disney's "Princess and the Frog," the animators consider themselves as actors with pencils.
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"The Princess and the Frog" introduces a new cast of memorable characters to the Disney family: a young New Orleans girl with a dream of owning her own restaurant, a charming prince, a menacing voodoo sorcerer, a firefly with a Cajun accent -- and a romantic reptilian couple.
The actors who bring them to life do so from a drawing board. "Princess and the Frog" marks a return to hand-drawn animation for Walt Disney Animation Studios.
In an age of computer-generated imagery and cutting-edge special effects technology, the concept of drawing an animated feature by hand has fallen by the wayside. But it's not a lost art.
Hand drawings add a vibrancy and richness to animated film. There's more subtlety in movement and expression. It gives the images a more realistic look, especially with human characters.
While some computer-generated animated films such as "Finding Nemo" and "The Incredibles" have their own appeal for audiences and are wildly popular, it doesn't necessarily mean that traditional animation is a thing of the past.
"I do not think that 2-D animation is dead. ... Hopefully we'll fast-forward through this time into a time when all kinds of animation are done and embraced," "Incredibles" creator Brad Bird told the Post-Gazette in 2004.
Randy Haycock is supervising animator for the Prince Naveen and frog prince characters, and Bruce Smith is supervising animator for the villain Dr. Facilier. Both were artists on animated classics: Smith was an animator on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" and "Tarzan" and Haycock's credits include "The Lion King," and "Pocahontas."
And they were eager to get back into it. "That's what I got into this business for, to create a performance by hand," Smith says.
Behind Tiana, the female lead, was Mark Henn, who also worked on many memorable Disney heroines such as Ariel ("The Little Mermaid,") Belle ("Beauty and the Beast") and Jasmine ("Aladdin").
The move to hand-drawn animation at Disney started when the company acquired Pixar in 2006 and put John Lasseter in charge of animation. Lasseter didn't believe that audiences didn't want to see hand-drawn animation anymore, Haycock says.
"He loved the legacy of hand-drawn animation at Disney, and he thought if anybody should still be doing hand-drawn films, it's Disney. His philosophy was always that it's about the story. It isn't about the medium. You tell a good story in any medium, and people will come to see it."
Many connect the actor or actress voicing the character of what they see on screen. The animator is the other half of the equation. Each of the major "Princess and the Frog" characters was assigned to one supervising animator, who was responsible for creating its gestures, movements and personality.
"We're sort of considered actors with pencils," Smith says.
"You cast these animators as if they were actors performing this role," Haycock says. "You get a lot more of the animator's personality and personal style that comes into the performance. I think it creates richer characters."
"It really allows you to focus on who the character is. It allows you to dive into it from a very methodical point of view," Smith says. "These films are never done in successive order. As an animator, you have to understand where your character is at any point in the film, what he's feeling, what his attitude is, which may affect his facial expressions."
Smith and Haycock said the team worked in a collaborative creative environment where directors Ron Clements and John Musker encouraged the animators to explore their character's personality.
"It's like a director with an actor saying, 'I want you to discover this character. I'll let you know if it's right tor wrong, but I want you to discover it,' " Haycock says. "That's their approach with the animator. They have a very clear vision of who the character is, but the specifics about how the character moves, the mannerism, that becomes very personal for us."
Haycock says Naveen was the animator's role of a lifetime for him. He was originally supposed to draw another supporting character when the chance to draw Naveen opened up at the last minute. "I hope it's like Harrison Ford doing Indiana Jones, even though he wasn't the first choice. I hope that's what Naveen becomes for me.
"He follows a long line of Disney princes and I really wanted him to set a new bar as a personality. He's not quite so perfect. He's funny and charming in ways other than just being good looking. I hope when people think of the frog prince, they'll think of Naveen above any other images that they've seen before."
The audio for the voices were recorded beforehand, so the animators also had that as a template to work from.
"Bruno Campos, who did the voice of Naveen, brought a lot to the performance. My task was to make him as entertaining visually," Haycock says.
"What's cool about animation is that the performance is always amped up a couple of notches," Smith says. "Even through Bruno was behind the microphone giving it as much sex appeal as possible, Randy's job is to make sure that he's appealing to all the ladies. When he delivers those key lines you have to swoon over those lines."
"That was my primary focus. I knew that I wanted every woman and girl who saw this movie to go home madly in love with Naveen," Haycock says.
The evil sorcerer Dr. Facilier, on the other hand, is a guy audiences will love to hate. Smith describes Facilier as "the love child of Captain Hook and Cruella De Vil."
"I've never had a chance to do a villain in any of these movies. The villain is normally the juiciest role." Smith brought out qualities in Facilier, who was voiced by Keith David, that he feels are unique in villains: the character is tall and handsome, and a smooth operator who can sweet talk people -- and who can carry off a big musical number, too.
In one scene, Facilier causes the untimely end of one of the film's lovable characters. "You had to see him completely at his meanest stroke," Smith says. "We had a lively debate about that specific scene. The scene you see in the movie is not nearly as gruesome [as the original]-- we tempered it down to the version that's actually in the film. But those spirited debates are what really fuels everybody's fire."
The backgrounds -- ornate painterly renderings of New Orleans street scenes and swampy bayou landscapes, teeming with rich details and magical colors and lighting, become a character in the film as well. There are many memorable sequences: when Facilier conjures up a swirling horde of spirits to pursue the frog prince; twinkling fireflies in a nighttime bayou scene; a lively New Orleans jazz band performance.
Although hand-drawn cartoons are labor-intensive, involving thousands of individual drawings, the artists don't see it as a chore.
"People often ask me 'How do you have the patience?' " Haycock says. "We don't think of each drawing as an entity of itself. It's a part of the larger canvas. It's like asking a painter, 'How do you have the patience to do every brushstroke?' "
First Published December 11, 2009 12:00 am
