The Disney Design Of Mirror Face Reality

The Disney Design of Mirror Face Condition
Disney has been a household name for a number of generations since its humble start in a cartoon studio in the 1920s. Since then they have brought forward the animation classics of childhood for the majority of the world.
In recent years however, new social movements such and feminism and others searching for equality have led to Disney being under scrutiny for what it has been producing.
Animation student Jessica Kendrick noticed there was something up with the Disney heroine figure that we’ve been seeing in recent years.
“It was an issue presented to me early on in my degree by my lecturer. When I asked him how to improve my character designs he told me that ‘they all have the same face’. I hadn’t noticed until he pointed it out, now it sticks out like a sore thumb to me.”
A few months after Kendrick’s realisation, the official character designs for Disney’s ‘Frozen’ were leaked. At first she believed it was a hoax, as the concept art seen so far was so far removed from the final designs of the main characters Anna and Elsa. Admittedly, she thought someone with a lot of time photoshopped Tangled’s Rapunzel’s face and body shape into a slightly different character.
“Of course there are some differences between Rapunzel and the Frozen girls. But there is practically no difference between Elsa and Anna in facial structure and body shape, besides surface details such as freckles or a difference in height. They’re practically mirror images with the same eyes, nose and mouth.”
So how is Disney getting away with something that any beginner in animation would get called out on? Kendrick argues that it wasn’t down to limited time, lazy design or the fact that it’s in CG, but rather an unsettling...

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...signed to be attractive, and yet still have various differences between them whereas the attractive females have little to none.
This brings us back to the stereotype that princesses are and can only be beautiful. Kendrick reflected more on this herself.
“Do I think that Disney’s a horrible animation studio for giving the women too small to be real waists? No, it’s just a point of exaggeration in their animation along with the big head and eyes. What I do find disturbing is that the beautiful characters are now recycling the exact same design with little to no difference. There’s a subliminal message that there’s only one way to be attractive, which is one of the worst messages to present in this day and age.”
Disney’s next major animation ‘Moana’ is due to be released in 2017. It will be interesting to see if Disney’s case of Mirror Face Condition in a chronic one.