Professional Make-up Project
Kate Garrett
The Little Mermaid - Dinsey animation.
The beginings.
In 1985 Ron Clements took Hans Christan andersens' text the little mermaid and started to create it into a disney animation. He was perticually intrested in this story due to it underwater scenes and he was keen to explore the possibities this would bring to the animation world.
Adapting the text.
But in traditional disney style the text was adapted so the the downbeat ending was removed and the sea witch (the villian) who was not very prominent nor had a name became their strong villan character.
Musical writting.
In 1986 major development started, the music was written before any animation was started. This was tomake sure any key plot points and character personality was accentuated where needs be by the songs. This style of music written added a theatrical style to the story line aswell.
The colour palette.
For insperation of the colours to be used throughout the film the team looked at works by Rowland B Wilson, a cartoonist, Chris Van Allsburgh and Ken O'connor.
' Their palette for the underwater scenes was most certainly not limited to shades of blue: because this was an animated rather than a live-action movie, they could draw on a whole host of other colours to help convey mood and emotion, to enhance the theatrics of the musical numbers, and, very importantly, to convey a feeling of warmth in the movie despite the fact that the setting is in real life so obviously chilly.'
(Grant, 1993, p334)
I have noticed that all the scenes are very colourfull and seem very happy, even when the evil sea witch is around her purple and greens are very intense giving it a softer appearance than if they were harsh almost eye sore tones.
Compared to Hans Christan Anderson's text.
I was suprised at how similar the texts meet up, until towards the end anyway. There are obvious changes such as in disney's ariels feel don't feel like their on fire when she walks and sublte differences that makes Anderson's version more adult and intense.
The major difference is the fact that at the end she doesn't end up marrying the prince and happy ever after instead she jumps into the water and her soul is taken by the air angels because of her pure and kind spirit and she has to work off 100 years to be given a human soul in return. Because of this I wanted my characters to reflect this spirit as it it they key characteristic I wanted it to be a huge influence on their looks which is why the highlights are golden and eveything has a light appearnce and feel about it.
Screen shots from the film.
Reference: Clements, R. and Musker, J. (1989). The Little Mermaid. [DVD]. USA: Walt Dinsey Pictures.
Characters.
