If any of you are familiar with character stylization or really art in general you might like this article. I'm talking about character stylization in the sense that when the artist is also the author of the character's personality and has written out their every thought in simply the way they are designed. This can also be called "interpreted art" as anyone can perceive it differently, but a common factor still remains that everyone agrees on. BASICALLY I'm going to "guess" what the princess' personality is like based on the way she's drawn, see what the general consensus is on her personality is and compare it to the artist's (strictly NOT the writer or director's) original idea of what they wanted the princess to come off as. And if this is at all interesting to you you can look up this with different artists by searching it as "the artist's definition of their work" and maybe you can find this with other characters.

P.S I know I had to do a lot of digging on the older movies, because of the lack of documentation, so good luck on the ones post 1980's!


Snow White — Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Not many of the animators at the Disney studio had had artistic training (most had been newspaper cartoonists); among these few was Grim Natwick. Disney recruited him for the animator's background in designing and animating Betty Boop. It showed an understanding of the female anatomy, and when Walt Disney hired Natwick he was given female characters to animate just about by himself.



Natwick attempted to animate Persephone, the female lead of The Goddess of Spring, but had proved largely unsuccessful, but the animator was eventually given the task of animating Snow White herself. Though live action footage of Snow White, the Prince and the Queen was shot as reference for the animators, the animators disapproved of rotoscoping, considering it to hinder the production of effective caricature. Natwick's original plan was to have Snow White be a "delicate, youthful care-free spirit" still keeping Goddess of Spring like inspiration. Of course this wasn't preferred to the sense of nobility and beauty that the art director, Albert Hurter, had envisioned for Snow White. Keeping her hair short and face made she carried a like-ness to 1930's actresses, but still a youthful and childish disposition to her body and facial structure.



The question is: Does her finale form encompass the feeling the animator wanted for her character?

Well, for me, if I were to look at clips from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and study Snow White as just a visual being and nothing else, I'd like to think she comes across as a sweet, motherly princess that is very gentle and soft-spoken. Now even though I think that, I also feel it's very far from what Natwick was going for. Going based off of the "Goddess of Spring" concept, I think Snow White isn't quite like that. In fact she takes more after Natwick's Betty Boop.



While Persephone looks more youthful and innocent, with light features and a natural un-made face, Snow White has innocence, but her accents are very mature and adult. She has rose red lips, almost dark red and arched thinned eyebrows with brown-grey eyeshadow. Really darker colors like that do translate to motherly and stern, but her face is almost round like a pancake, I think, to almost get rid of how much older the make-up makes her look.



Her dress has a light happy yellow at the bottom (gentle feeling and bright), but it's immediately contrasted with a dark/primary blue top and a brown-red cape. That contrast keeps the look from being a cheerful free-spirit and makes it lean towards more of the regal, princess, motherly and "put-together" side of things instead. And then the bow on her head looks very juvenile, but it's still a ribbon as opposed to maybe a flower crown and it makes her hair constricting rather than flowing. All in all I think everything to be loose, bright, flowing and very natural when I think "Goddess of Spring" and "delicate free-spirit."



Overall Snow White definitely comes across a youthful and very positive minded by the public, but still a regal princess who doesn't always play out it the open meadows and will take care of people, as she has to being a princess and all. So no she isn't exactly the artist's vision, but she is exactly a perfect Snow White. Just a graceful and youthful, but still regal princess.



So what do you think; does Snow White perfectly embody what you think her animator was going for, or do you think she's way off? Do you agree with me? Would you have preferred the animator's original idea or what she turned out like? Tell me what you're thinking in the comments! I'm actually very curious because no one I'm ever with likes talking about this stuff, so don't be shy. Even if you hated this article tell me that too, because I was thinking of making it a series for all of the princesses and I don't want anyone to hate me for clogging the articles with stuff nobody's interested in. Of course I do hope you liked it *wink, wink* and thanks for reading!