>>15558 Maybe cos they're literally dolls; that is, they all look the fucking same. And that's intentional. Have you seen this ridiculous quote from Frozen's Head of Animation:
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 (Kristen Bell) being angry.
>>15598 To be fair to him for blokes animation you can do completely ridiculous head shapes and expressions and still identifiably have it as a bloke, whereas for women they'll end up looking like Cruella de Vil quite easily.
I read that whole wikipedia article the other day.
>>15599 I don't understand your point. Are there no women who resemble Cruella de Vil? Are all women completely bereft of prominent chins and cheekbones?
>>15600 I think when you're doing a female protagonist in a kids animated film, there's generally a trend of making them attractive. I think because ugly women tend to be associated with villainy, unless they're fat in which case they're matronly. But you can get away with ugly/fat male protagonists, probably for the same reason they're more accepted in real life. A loud fat man is the jolly life and soul of the party. A loud fat woman is an obnoxious pig.
>>15602 So should one really 'be fair' to the animator, or rubbish his narrow-minded sexism? It's insidious indoctrination of children about what people look like and what it is acceptable for people look like.
>>15603 Innit though. Society informs everything, including what fictional characters look like, and that in turn informs society.
>>15604 It is indeed sexism, but unfortunately I don't think a high budget Disney film will tackle that sort of thing just yet. With Disney things they want to market it and merchandise it within an inch of its life, and it's a lot easier to sell pretty dolls to little girls than it is to sell frumpy ones. I think they even did it with the princess from Brave a few months back, where in the Disney Princesses line of toys they basically removed all her imperfections to make her into a generic super model style princess.
This is problematic in itself because when all the toys/characters that little girls play with and pretend to be are thin flawless women with hourglass figures, the girls will end up developing an unrealistic idea of how they should look which is only worsened when they reach tweenage/teenage years and see all the gossip mags about losing cellulite and getting a toned bum and tum to turn your man on.
It'll take a lot of time and effort for these attitudes to be reversed, and I doubt it'll be Disney taking the big risk just yet.
Misstep (and embarrassing reversal) aside, I think Merida from Brave is a pretty good example of Disney bucking the trend, though whether you consider this "taking the big risk" is up to you I suppose. I dare say the sold plenty of dolls either way.
I'd be more inclined to grumble about whatever lazy fuck thinks that illustrating and animating women is more difficult than illustrating or animating men. Piss poor excuse really.
Could just be honest and say 'we wanted to do them this way'.
>>15607 When you look at girl's dolls, they're all attractive and slim. Like Barbie, Bratz, Polly Pocket. With boy's toys, there is a lot more diversity. There's obviously the big tough men like He-Man and Action Man, then there's the average kid like Mighty Max, and you've got all sorts of Ghostbusters like the fat schlubby Ray, the nerdy Egon, average guy Peter, black man Winston. Even when there's both male and female characters in a toy line, the females tend to be very sexualised and attractive while the males have more diversity. With He-Man, you've got the big buff and handsome He-Man, but you have creepy Orko and stocky Ram Man and gangly prick Mekanek and German porn star Man-At-Arms. But the female characters tend to be sexy slim Teela and sexy slim Evil-Lyn. Or with Thundercats all the females tend to be beautiful and slender like Pumyra or Cheetarah, while the males have more diversity with shit like Snarf.
>>15612 Evil-Lyn is a villain and Orko is creepy as fuck. No-one wants to be Snarf. You're probably right in general but your given examples of role-models are terrible.
Ugly women aren't as easy to empathise with as attractive ones, and women don't generally have the same charisma that enables ugly men, a la shrek, to be treated in the same way. It's not sexism, it's just how it is.
>>15604 What sexism? People demand that their heroines look pretty all the time, and that's what they're animating. He's saying it's difficult to do so but they achieved it. What's the issue?
Kids love it and it's genuinely visually beautiful.
Unfortunately it's entirely derivative of other Disney works. I would not be surprised to discover that the plot was automatically generated by computer from previous Disney movies.