Welcome back to my Disney scrapbook. If you weren’t around on Friday, you can experience all the highs and lows of part one here.

As previously mentioned, the nice people from Walt Disney Animation invited me to spend a couple of days at their Burbank studios to celebrate the fact that their next big feature release, The Princess and The Frog, heralds a return to hand-drawn animation.

The Princess and the Frog puts a bit of a spin on the classic fairytale. It features a girl named Tiana, a frog prince who desperately wants to be human again, and a fateful kiss that leads them both on a hilarious adventure through the mystical bayoux of Louisiana. The film also brings Disney’s first African American princess to the silver screen.

Roll tape:



We had a sneak peek at 40 minutes of footage while we were at the studios … and it’s pretty damn spectacular. The visuals have that old-school Disney feel to them (the directors wanted the style to emulate the Disney classic Lady and the Tramp) and the songs - which were created by Disney veteran Randy Newman - channel the infectiously jazzy vibe of New Orleans.

It’s particularly impressive to watch the footage when you’ve just been reminded how hard it is to draw. I was one of those kids who was still struggling with stick figures in year 9 … and so it was with a cold heart of fear that I attended the drawing workshop with animator Randy Haycock.
 
Haycock had the mammoth task of creating the human/frog character of Naveen in The Princess and the Frog. Which, when drawn properly, looks like this:

 

When he’s drawn by an artistically challenged journalist from Melbourne, he looks more like this:



He’s drunk. And blue.
 
After viewing sections of the movie and failing miserably at art we were introduced to some more of the people who made the film happen.

JOHN LASSETER, Chief Creative Officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios


  
While his title of Chief Creative Officer of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios is certainly impressive, John Lasseter actually resembles a big kid. His shirts are loud (“Hawaiian shirts are like a toy I can wear … it makes me feel like I’m still a kid”) and he has a passion for Disney that would rival any four year old’s. In fact, his first job was as a ride operator at Disneyland.

The man lives, breathes and eats animation. He helped launch Pixar Studios in 1986 and since then he’s won two Academy Awards and directed Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and Cars.

When asked whether going back to an older animation technique is a smart move, Lasseter is adamant that in the case of The Princess and the Frog, it’s the right decision. (Though he does admit that he ‘s nuts about 3D … so much so that he had all of his wedding photos taken in 3D).

“I don’t think the medium makes the film entertaining or not. It just has to be a good story,” he explains.

“Hand drawn for me is a wonderful art form and I never understood why the studios wanted to stop making hand drawn films ... Fundamentally, different subject matter suits different forms of animation. For example, Toy Story just wouldn’t have been as good as a hand drawn film. The thinking behind Toy Story at the time was ‘everything we’re making with computer generated animation looks a bit plastic … so let’s make all the main characters plastic’ … and that’s the whole reason Toy Story came about.

“But some things you just can’t do properly with computers. For example, the character of Dopey in Snow White – you just couldn’t have done him justice on a computer. He needs to be all stretchy and slouchy.

“The Princess and the Frog is one of those films that I think lends itself to hand drawn. It’s a sincere, old-fashioned fairytale and I think it requires this gorgeous old art form to tell the story properly. There’s something so perfect about fairytales and Disney, and we haven’t done one for a while. In fact, the last one was Beauty and the Beast in 1994".

It’s clear that Lasseter has had to justify his decision to return to hand drawn many times already. His answers to the journalists’ questions are well rehearsed and considered.

“I’m not concerned,” he says at one point. “We faced similar sort of questioning when we did Toy Story. Back then people through computer generated animation was too cold and it wouldn’t grab the audience. I just keep saying over and over again that it’s never the medium that entertains the audience – it’s the story.”

It also becomes apparent that Lasseter doesn’t do things by halves. “Quality is the best business plan,” is a phrase that is repeated more than twice, and he tells of the countless hours spent researching subject matter for all their animations:

“Research is imperative … When we did Finding Nemo, we all became qualified scuba divers so we could watch sea creatures in their natural environments. When I made Toy Story I went to the toy shop and bought just about one of every toy they had on the company credit card.”

This research extended to The Princess and The Frog - not only did they have live frogs in the studio so animators could observe how they moved, they also spent time in New Orleans, eating the food, listening to the music and taking trips down the bayous, where much of the film is set.

JOHN MUSKER AND RON CLEMENTS, Directors, The Princess and the Frog.

Two of the men who visited New Orleans with Lasseter were the film’s directors, John Musker and Ron Clements. They too are Disney veterans, having directed The Little Mermaid and Aladdin.
 

"Don’t touch. Is mine".

The two gentlemen make it very clear that they’re enormously grateful to John Lasseter for giving the green light to another hand drawn animation.

“We were both shopping ideas around to other studios, and not really getting very far,” admits Clements. “John Lasseter really bought us in from the cold dark world.”

When the directors were asked to come into the studio with three ideas for a hand-drawn animation, they arrived a week later with ten different ideas.

“A big part of The Princess and the Frog, for us, is that we wanted a female lead who was aspirational. And we really believe that Tiana is a strong character that little girls can look up to. She works hard (Tiana is working two jobs as a waitress so she can get enough money to open her own restaurant) and she is fiercely independent.”

They go on to emphasise that coordinating the return to hand drawn was no easy feat. “It’s amazing how close (hand drawn animation) was to dying out. So much so that all the animator’s drawing desks had all been thrown out. Not only that, but we had to find 400-500 artists to come back and work on this film, so it was a fairly big crew to assemble.

This interview was particularly satisfying for me, as I managed to settle a 24 year old grudge. Both Musker and Clements were involved with the dark 1985 Disney film The Black Cauldron, which had my five-year-old self bolting from the cinema with shaky sobs, vowing never to return again. When I told them about the incident, they were both suitably mortified.

“Oh that’s awful! I must admit that in hindsight, I can see how that film was a little dark,” says Musker. “It’s a difficult balance, creating villains that are ‘bad’ enough to serve their purpose, but not so evil that they have little versions of you unable to sit through the film. “

Thank you. Consider me suitably mollified.

ERIC GOLDBERG, Supervising Animator, The Princess and the Frog.

My final interview was with animator Eric Goldberg, who actually looks a bit like a cartoon character himself.


 
Goldberg is the animator who all the young guns look up to. He’s been around for years. In fact, he was the guy who animated The Genie for Aladdin. “That was great fun,” he says, reminiscing about the experience. “Creating that character with Robin Williams was amazing. You’d watch him sitting there eating a sandwich and watching television between sessions, and you could just see him taking it all in and thinking intently. Then he’d get behind the microphone and give the biggest performance. Amazing.”
 
For The Princess and the Frog Goldberg animated Louis, the trumpet playing alligator. After chatting with him for I learned just how time-consuming it must be to be a key animator on a feature film. There are about 24 frames in one second of film. That’s 24 individual drawings he does to create one second of footage – and they often do about 8-10 drafts to get each frame right. That makes it about 192 drawings he does to create one second of film.
 
Meeting Goldberg was one of the best things about the trip to LA. Without sounding like a bit of a sap, his childlike enthusiasm about another hand drawn animation being released was infectious.  It’s something that becomes really apparent when you watch this video clip on TheVine that features interview with some of the animators.
 
And it’s easy to see why these guys are so excited. Goldberg is a guy who has dedicated his entire life to being the best in his field – then all of a sudden computer-generated animation comes along and his craft is made almost redundant.
 
Then, out of the blue, John Lasseter comes on board as the new creative head of the studio and – like a fairy godmother might – tells you that you can have another go at doing what you love. That your expertise is once again valued.
 
Guess dreams really do come true after all.