Disney Exec Says Women Are Hard to Animate Because of Emotions

This Thanksgiving, Disney’s studios will release Frozen, an infinitely license-able animated family film with a cast of main characters consisting of a reindeer (prediction: bumbling but lovable!), a talking snowman (prediction: sassy in a dumb way!) and four animated humans — two boy cartoons, two girl cartoons. This is an accomplishment because, according to one Disney exec, female characters are harder to animate than male ones due to their having to show a “wide range of emotions” and having to “keep them pretty” in the midst of movement. Almost immediately, the internet called bullshit.

The exec, whose foot is probably by now firmly in his mouth, is one Lino Disalvo, Disney’s head of animation for film. He lauded the achievements of the animation staff who worked on Frozen to a visiting animation blogger, saying making the film look good was a unique challenge. BECAUSE LADIES.

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.

Hey, if Disalvo thinks animating women is hard, he doesn’t even want to know how hard it is to be a woman. Boobs, vaginas, etc. Plus we’ve got all those emotions to express while still remaining pretty. It’s exhausting. No wonder we’re so moody.

One gif-literate Tumblr called bullshit almost immediately, creating the following image to show just how similarly the faces of three of human characters actually look.

Hm. They do look kind of identical.

At least they’re “staying pretty.”

[Fan Voice]

[h/t Buzzfeed]