Princess and the Frog is return to Disney of old

By Karen McLauchlan, Evening Gazette

WITH the aid of continually improving computer gadgetry, we all know that drawing film cartoons by hand is a skill long confined to movie history. Wrong!

For its latest animation, Disney has gone back to basics, re-employing skilled animators to bring to life the timeless story of THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG.

It also marks the return to the classic fairy tale and a return to the musical.

“If there is a single lesson we could take from Walt himself to take Walt Disney Animation Studios into the future,” says executive producer John Lasseter, “it is to leverage the richness of its past: its beloved storytelling, its successful characters, its musical opulence.

“All these are an essential part of our newest hand-drawn project.”

That doesn’t mean that the Disney computer room has become redundant but, for now at least, artists skilled in traditional hand drawing are back in business.

That’s got to be good news for animator Andreas Deja, who has played a key part in bringing in The Princess And The Frog to the screen.

“It was very sad for those of us who had hand-drawn some of Disney’s earlier creations,” he said. “Very sad when it went away. Some of my friends took up the new way of doing animation but I was more stubborn.

“I continued with hand-drawn, doing bits and pieces of work, until there was nothing left to draw.”

Then, in 2006, John Lasseter (and Ed Catmull) took the reins of Disney’s animation studios and brought back hand drawing.

“Now I am doing more and more,” says Deja. “I am currently working on a new Winnie the Pooh film, drawing Tigger, and have more drawing lined up after that.”

While the computer has worked wonders for modern animated films - and will continue to do so - the old way of doing things certainly adds a classic charm to The Princess And The Frog.

In fact, if the film had been given the go-ahead when it was first mooted, it probably would have been hand-drawn anyway, for it’s been 18 years since the idea of making The Princess And The Frog was first talked about and various treatments considered.

When, all these years later, Disney finally gave the project the green light, the makers pulled out all the stops and spared no expense in ensuring the finished product looked and sounded right.

They decided to set this story of a beautiful girl with a dream in New Orleans in the 1920s, when jazz was at its height.

Now you may think that any settings that looked vaguely like the so-called Big Easy would do for a fairy tale that would be seen predominantly by children ... but this is Disney, a company that likes to get things right.

To capture the city’s authenticity, the film-makers made multiple trips to New Orleans to research the food, music, architecture, surrounding countryside and the people.

Incredibly, their research included the taking of more than 50,000 photographs of the city’s iconic images to use as reference and inspiration.

“One of the unique things about this film is that it’s not just a fairy tale, it’s actually set in a real time in a real city,” says director John Musker. “So a lot of the environments in the movie are places you can actually visit.”

He even goes so far as to say that the film is a tribute to New Orleans, after the devastation of Hurricane  Katrina  in 2005 and that he hopes the film will encourage tourism to the great Louisiana city.

While the film is about a young girl with a dream - that dream has come true for Anika Noni Rose, the actress who voices the central character Princess Tiana.

“Her journey is similar to my own,” she says. “I always wanted to be an actress and people were always telling me it would not be possible. But I worked at it and made it happen.”