Disney Princess Article: Frozen, CGI and the "Same Face Syndrome"

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Frozen, CGI and the "Same Face Syndrome"

posted by sarchasm

anna r u drunk :/

Alright, this is going to contain critical and possibly controversial opinions about Frozen and Tangled, as well as other things, so if you can't stand to hear these movies badmouthed I'd suggest that you skip this article. Now that you've been suitably warned, on with the article!
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MARKETING

The first that you see of new Disney characters is almost always through promotional rendered images, so that's where we are going to start in this dissection of Disney's character design.

To begin, let's look at some of the earlier promotional art of Elsa and Anna:

Looking at these two, it's difficult to spot much in the way of differences. Sure, they're wearing different clothing, hair, and makeup, but those are only artificial details. For a cast of characters to be varied and diverse, body type and facial features should be taken into account along with these artificial details. Which is why it is troubling that Anna and Elsa have virtually the exact same facial features and body types. "But wait," you say, "Elsa and Anna are sisters. Surely sisters are supposed to look alike!" And sure, they should. It would be just as odd if they had no similar features. But they aren't twins, so it's just pure laziness to take one 'marketable' face, tweak it a little bit, and pretend you have two radically different character designs. And not only do both Frozen sisters have almost the exact same face, this isn't where this puppy-eyed, snub nosed trend began. For that, we'll have to go back to 2010...

TANGLED

The first ever CGI princess has always looked to me like she was designed in a laboratory for the purpose of making millions on dolls. Her infantile, eyes, snub nose and mouth always in a quirky smile... any advertiser's wet dream, that's for sure. However, one interesting thing I noticed about the Frozen sisters is, not only did they have an imitation of Rapunzel's face nestled between their CGI curls, it also appeared that with the marketing of Anna and Elsa they just took the two angles they were going with Rapunzel. Because if you think back to the advertising for Tangled, with Rapunzel's promotional images there were two angles they played: the cute, quirky Rapunzel, jumping around and brushing her hair, and the fiesty, 'tough' Rapunzel, using her hair as a whip and brandishing a frying pan.

After all, look at these two comparisons and try telling me that there are influences not only in actual character design, but also marketing angles:

FINAL WORDS

So, it seems as though lately the Disney Princess lineup has two options: quirky and awkward, or 'strong empowered woman'. And I can't say I'm fond of this, and really hope this trend doesn't continue with Moana and onward.

After all, Disney is a huge company, and the Disney Princess line up is quite prevalent all over the world. Why can't we have original, unique character designs, instead of everything being copied to match society's ideal of beauty for the sake of marketability?

And although BH6 did a lot better with this, and Merida certainly doesn't adhere to standards of beauty, BH6 has nothing to do with the DPs and Merida is Pixar. Which means that we just have to hope that the next Disney Princess affiliated Disney feature doesn't continue this trend.
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Well, there goes my first article! It could be a lot better, and perhaps it was a poor choice to choose a controversial topic for my first article, but oh well. I hope you all enjoyed!

no rlly anna r u on meth or ??

RogelioT, DisneyNissen and 28 others like this

zanhar1 I just gotta say I love the way you word things here; the tone and word choice here really made the article enjoyable.

dimitri_ Cool article!

jacksfrost Love love love this article! It really annoys me how the world's most influential animation company is being so blatantly lazy with their designs because they're so scared of taking any risks. It's obvious that they can design other types of women, other types of beautiful women at that, but they've got into a formula that works and their mooching it for all it's worth. Your writing is really great and I loved the little comments here and there like "any advertiser's wet dream" which showed your humor ^^ Again great article!

Sk8er__grl Did you make those Anna edits?? I love them, haha. Anyway, nice article, though I disagree with a lot. It's obvious they have similar features, but I think people make it a bigger deal then it is. I'm not saying you were doing that, but I just mean in general that the deal the public makes about the similarities between the three is a bit much for something I don't think matter's much. Also, I think one thing I really love about Elsa and Anna (And to a lesser extent Rapunzel, because I think she pushes both things a bit too much) is they are all quirky and awkward, while also strong and empowered. (I think Elsa really showed off her quirky side during the coronation with her goofiness around Anna, shown love for chocolate, and being a bit of a jokester with Anna when she pushed him on the Duke like that) Anyway, though I disagree, cute article. =)

audreybrooke Very interesting!

scarletunicorn It's obviously all done for marketing purposes. Like, back when Rapunzel first came into the world, people WORSHIPPED her. Dolls of her sold like crazy. So, Disney, being the greedy beings that they are, thought that we would like more of the same type of heroine. It's the big reason why Anna and Elsa look the way they are- MORE DOLLS! Quick, run to the Disney store and get your Winter Rapunzel, Nerd Rapunzel and Redhead Rapunzel before they sell out!

Swanpride I love Rapunzel, but that doesn't mean that I want a series of clones of her.

Silverrose1991 Well said! Disney needs to offer a larger variety of heroines, aesthetically-wise.

Digoenes Let's also add that Anna and Elsa's mother looks JUST like them only with brown hair and maybe a line or two on her face. At least with Rapunzel's mom she looked like a middle aged woman. Anna and Elsa's mom looks like a tired 20 year old. The men in Frozen, in contrast, have very different body and face types: Hans, Kristoff, the king of Arendelle, the duke of Weselton, are all different. A good rule in animation is the silhouette principle: if you can differentiate characters by only their silhouette then you have good character design. Elsa, Anna, and their mother fail this principle because they all have the same face/silhouette (but with different hair styles, which as you pointed out is cheating). I really hope Moana will look like a Polynesian girl and not just a darker skinned Rapunzel.

MalloMar I agree with this article. I'll admit there are hand-drawn heroines that look similar, but it's more noticeable in the modern CGI characters, mostly because these movies were released more recently and there is less time between them. I agree with everyone who mentioned Moana. I really hope she has a more unique design. Sort of off topic, but I hope Moana doesn't have that modern slang and bubbliness that's become common. I think Disney should try to make unique/developed characters instead of trying to make them bad*ss and relate-able. Oh, that's off topic, too. Sorry. Great job on your first article.

MaidofOrleans Amazing first article! I completely agree with what you said. I'm so disappointed in Disney for being so lazy with their animation. If they simply looked around their studio they would see the amazing diversity in physical features not only between members of different ethnicities, but members of the same ethnicity as well. Why settle for mainstream beauty standards when (in my opinion) it's SO much more interesting and beautiful to have characters that are unique both physically and personality-wise!

Annabethandco I really enjoyed this article but I feel more detail could have been added about how this trend seems to only occur in the females disney produces and what this tells us. I also feel that you could have added more detail about big hero 6 but I understand you wanted to keep this DP related.

justinfangrrl THANK YOU, THIS IS WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO SAY. And then Honey Lemon is a carbon copy of Rapunzel. If they make one more female character that has their same facial structure for the love of god I'm going to evaporate

sarchasm @sk8r_grl: Yeah, I made the icons. Anyway, imo it is kind of something to discuss, because instead of adhering to conventional female beauty standards with every princess, Disney should represent that almost all people look different. And the thing is, while it's nice to be empowered, with Elsa, Anna and Rapunzel we only see one way that women can have empowerment -- with Elsa and Rapunzel's 'bring it on' faces in the marketing images, for example. There's lots of ways a female character can be strong in her own way -- even oft-bashed Snow White is an example of a strong character, and I wish we'd see more variations of ways to be strong and empowered from Disney. And frankly, I'm bored sick of quirky and awkward, and wish Disney would make fewer characters with 'quirky' as such a prominent trait. @Annabethandco: I'm glad you enjoyed! Although no need to worry about my lack of elaboration on those topics -- I'm planning on doing a continuation with more focus on modern Disney's male characters compared to female ones, as well as Frozen compared to BH6 and Brave. ^-^ @everyone else: thanks for the comment, and I agree!

_CatWoman_ I've pretty much come to the same conclusion. Nice article.

AudreyFreak I wouldn't say Anna and Elsa look much alike in that pic. That's Elsa old (and not very pretty imo) promo shots way before they movie came out, while Anna's is much more recent and does look more like Elsa's promos. Anna, thank goodness, is not marketed anymore in that very unflattering old promo. It should also be worth noting that Rapunzel's actual face looks very different from the one in the movie- I wish I could find the picture comparing the two side by side but I can't. but you can easily use a screenshot to see, I guess. Her eyes are less rounded, her eyebrows are longer and far more arched even when they arch in the movie, her face shape is different, etc. She looks older and more like a Dreamworks girl there. Kristoff, too, looks like a Nordic version of Aladdin, especially if you see his 2D versions, and he's a Sami, so likely a Finnish guy, so he has that excuse. Hans is from another country yet shares many traits with Flynn so it isn't just the girls. (And I know it's a popular theory that the queens are sisters but I don't think they look alike at all.) Some more facial differences would be nice, but with CG I imagine it's easier and thus faster to animate characters who aren't as unique-looking as a snowflake. However, it really annoys me when people dismiss the three as looking the exact same (not saying you did) because Anna and Elsa have a clear ethnic look to them, with the upturned, concave noses (which I've noticed are still different- Elsa's is flatter looking than Anna's), wide-set faces, upturned almond-shaped eyes, and small lips, as many Norwegian and Swedish women have- which I commend Disney for doing at least- while Rapunzel with her rounder, softer, Ariel-like features could be any number of European ethnicities, like an American. It's racist to act like whites all look the same (and this happens to light-haired women WAY more than brunettes), as it would be to act like Asians all look the same or whoever, but people do this anyway. But I've thought that about Rapunzel also- cute doll-like face and long brushable hair (which is canon, so I have to give them slack here)? If that doesn't say "easy to manufacture into toys" I don't know what does. Plus as mentioned, she looks a LOT like Ariel, far more to them than the Frozen girls imo, and Disney knows people find Ariel cute.

324anna Great article! You explained well your opinion and I mostly agree with what you said. I actually believe that the Frozen sisters are not as similar to Rapunzel as people make them to be (and I don't base my opinion on their looks on their promos because they look quite different there than in the movie), because in that way, many DPs look alike, but I can't argue that Disney was quite lazy and instead of doing something more unique, they decided to play safe and go with the look they knew would sell more and be more marketable. And I admit that the similarities between the three females in Frozen (Elsa, Anna and their mother) are unacceptable, they are basically the same person with different hair and some small differences in their eyes and noses (and HOW can the Queen of Arendelle look the same age as her daughters?!!) I also agree with many users who commented here and I hope they give Moana (and Angelina) more unique looks AND personalities! It's time for Disney to take some risks.

LanternTroller 1. It will definitely continue with Moana. 2. Rapunzel looks like Ariel, and so do Anna, Elsa and Moana. Why? Because Disney doesn't like trying anything new.