Disney has been entertaining us with animated films for years, but in the recent decade, the studio's animation has evolved to resemble more the animation used in characters seen in Pixar films—and it's not just because of CGI.
At least that's what one Tumblr user has noticed, so he investigated this theory after seeing the posters for Pixar's latest film Inside Out.
Tumblr user Alex from the blog "Something Classy" wrote about the similarities among characters, finding that female characters all have the same features.
After tracing the faces of the female and male characters in the upcoming Inside Out, Alex discovered that all female characters had the same round face with small pointy nose, and all the male characters have more distinctive faces.
Alex's theory is known as the "same face syndrome," popular amongst Disney where "good" characters are pretty and "bad" characters ugly, so many do have similar characteristics. However, Alex wanted to see how far this theory goes, comparing Disney versus Pixar characters to see how similar they really are.
"Apparently every Disney woman is a clone/direct descendant of some primordial creature with huge round cheeks and a disturbingly small nose, because there is no other explanation (yes, there is (it's lazy sexism)) for the incredible lack of diversity among these female faces," the Tumblr post reads.
On the other hand, the male characters are typically square and more diverse. "Boys in animated movies have faces that are square, round, skinny, fat, alien-looking, handsome, and ugly," Alex writes. "The only face that girls get to have is some round snub-nosed baby face. That's not right."
You might remember that Frozen's head of animation, Lino DiSalvo, was quoted in 2013 saying female characters were tricky because you have to "keep them pretty." DiSalvo left Disney for Paramount Studios in June 2014.
Disney responded then to the allegations of sexism by saying that animation is a "complex art form" and that the comments "were recklessly taken out of context. As part of a roundtable discussion, the animator was describing some technical aspects of CG animation and not making a general comment on animating females versus males or other characters."
The differences between rivals Disney and Pixar may seem a bit fuzzy, especially since Walt Disney Co. acquired Pixar Animation Studios in 2006.
Even though the Walt Disney Animation Studios and the latter are run by the same man, Pixar co-founder John Lasseter, the two are separate studios with separate teams which consist of different animators, producers, directors and software.
Disney Animation Studios is known to use cel animation, or hand-drawn animation, but it does sometimes blend this style together with CGI like in Frozen. Pixar, however, favors CGI, or computer-generated imagery.
In terms of storylines, the two studios generally release different types of films, with Pixar only producing one fairy tale, Brave, which was released by Walt Disney Pictures. However, Pixar broke out of the stereotype for villains being ugly, featuring some more "adorable" villains in its movies.
But according to this Tumblr post, when comparing Disney versus Pixar female characters, they all are the same at the end of the day.
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Photo: Candace Lindemann | Flickr
