Don’t let this person find out that Anime exists, her head will explode.
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This seems to be more of a pixar / 3D animation issue than an across-the-board animation issue. These women are basically all Betty Boop sexy babies, but this doesn’t hold for all of animation.
Even old hand-drawn Disney movies had somewhat more parity between male and female faces, and a lot more diversity of female faces. Aladdin has pretty huge eyes, though a hair or two smaller than Jasmine’s. Eric from the little mermaid is the same. The Beast and Gaston have pretty small eyes compared to Belle, but these are hyper-masculine caricatures in context. The Beast’s eyes actually take on more of the “female” proportion after he turns human. John Smith in Pocahontas has bigger eyes, but that is just coding for race, which in this case apparently overpowers coding for gender…
Animation where dot-eyes are the mode, like Adventure Time and Popeye give dot-eyes all around. In Scooby-Doo and other Hanna Barbera sutff, everyone has those weird flesh-tone eye-whites with the simple lines for iris/pupil and shape, male and female.
In anime, there are basically two kinds of eyes, Huge and Squinty. Old, wise, or extremely hardcore characters get squinty eyes, Everyone else gets the doll-face. I’d assume that in this case, this is for allowing additional expressiveness and melodrama in a medium where the detail level is limited to the width of a pencil line (or was historically). This holds true for Disney too, although the melodrama in Anime is opera-level, whereas in Disney is musical-level, generally. Miyazaki reigns it in quite a bit, and eye proportions are a lot close to human, but the more subtle storylines match the style.
I’m tempted to argue that this Pixar-dollface-effect has something to do with avoiding the uncanny valley that CG animation has to contend with that hand-drawn just doesn’t. If you take a look at the mo-cap stuff like beowulf and Polar Express where all the eyes are relatively well-proportioned, the faces are creepy and un-readable (shiver).
However, this doesn’t explain the gender disparity. Nothing does except that small eyes look tougher, and big eyes are softer and cuter, so there’s some flat-out gender coding gong on. It’s not surprising that the least edited image here is from Brave.
Interestingly, the snowman in frozen also has huge, disproportionate eyes. They are not sexy doll eyes, though, they are the silly, old-school cartoon eyes, with a big, warping shape and black dot iris/pupil, a-la Abu and the Genie in Aladdin. These are a third kind of comedic-side character clown eyes that aren’t supposed to code as main character / entirely human.
ETA; you want to be creeped out by some cartoon eyes? Watch Madame Tutli Putli where the filmmakers superimposed filmed human eyes onto stop-motion animation. I mean, depends on how much you like sleeping at night…
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That makes it sound like you (and those who liked your comment) think this project has some particular (activist?) point. Even though Caroline says in her post that it doesn’t have one.
As the comments below yours show, the project does nevertheless have interesting effects, and different ones for different viewers. For me, the effect is like that of a lot of “modern” art – it makes me see something I’m used to seeing all the time in a new light. Viewing several of these pairings consecutively makes me think that the cartoon versions are actually kinda fucking weird looking. And that absurdly Big Eyes weren’t just a sixties thing.
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Note that this mostly seems to apply to female protagonists. Female antagonists and even side characters get a lot more variety. There are plenty of examples of Disney characters breakking the mould, but that they stand out is certainly an issue.
Cruella Deville. Ursula. Odie. Helga Sinclair. Audrey. Jean Calhoun. Yzma.
50 Intertube points for making me say that out loud just to hear it.
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Many of the originals are clearly stylistic choices. The woman from Brave was deliberately given something of a moon-face… she’s just drawn that way, as the line goes. Would you complain about Jessica Rabbit’s unrealistic shape?
It’s a little bizarre to claim that neutering the creative choices of a caricaturist is somehow righting some kind of wrong… ever watch anime?
And while we’re at it, what’s up with this Picasso guy?
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The major change seems to be the eyes. So is this basically de-mangaizing them? I’ve never understood that strange GOGGLE EYE approach.
Wish it had gone farther. Those eyes are still enormous.
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Wait till you have to make puppets of these characters with mechanical eyes. The radius from the art would indicate the eye balls are about the size of the whole head!
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what’s is interesting is that so much of modern cartoon/fairy tale characters have these big heads and eyes - the cuteness factor - which is why I prefer the 19th and early 20th century illustrators like Arthur Rackham, Hermann Vogle, Ivan Bilibin etc. Their drawings are less cute more scary as it should be. So much of the old fairy tales have been Disneyfied nowadays. Which is why I think Gorey was so popular.
One interesting point about Arthur Rackham, one of my friends who grew up in England went to grammar school with one of Arthur Rackhams grandsons (or relation of some kind) and apparently her really looked like a lot of Rackhams characters did - with the exaggerated fox like face.
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Precisely what makes it “clear” that they were stylistic choices? Are you “clearly” capable of seeing into the brain of the artist as the characters were created? Were you “clearly” there at the design meetings when the decisions were made? Or --gasp-- is there room for discussion here? Clearly not.
First, as @milliefink noted:
Or maybe you would prefer someone bring you the article so it can be read in the white room with the lead pipe? Besides, what’s up with this RTFM or RTFA thing?
And what she discovered is that while Disney and Pixar men are given a diversity of face shapes, the women all have round faces with small button-like noses.Because that article, the one you didn't read, is **all about** "neutering the creative choices of [the artist]" amirite?
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Who’s complaining? Did you read Caroline’s post?
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thanks for that.
Funny how “features” once again means the front of the head…
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People get so used to Boing Boing posts being about “here’s another injustice we must correct” that it becomes easy to just assume that’s what the post is about.
Yeah, I supposed it’s asking a helluva lot to ask anyone to read, what, five lines of text? before commenting. Le sigh.
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Let me get that for you:
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I’m looking forward to the next installment, “How female claymated characters look with more natural features.”
