#eric larson

Hellboy / Savage Dragon

I'm thinking of a few Disney examples.

When the Haunted Mansion was first being developed at Disneyland, artists Marc Davis and Claude Coats disagreed on what its tone should be: Coats wanted it to be genuinely scary, Davis wanted it to be funny. Ultimately, the ride became a blend of both, and its blend of creepiness and comedy is the key to its success.

During the making of Snow White and Cinderella, there were evidently similar disagreements between the two head animators for the heroine. In Snow White, they say that Hamilton Luske saw Snow White as a more purely innocent, sweet, childlike character, while Grim Natwick treated her as more of a young woman, with more ladylike grace and more of a sassy and clever side. Likewise, in the making of Cinderella, Eric Larson envisioned Cinderella as more of an innocent, artless young country girl, while (again) Marc Davis treated her as a more mature, sophisticated and strong-willed young woman. In both of the finished films, those different visions of the heroine are combined, and as a result, both Snow White and Cinderella more complex and well-rounded characters than they often get credit for being.

And during production of Beauty and the Beast, screenwriter Linda Woolverton has described in many interviews how she and Howard Ashman struggled with other members of the creative team over Belle's characterization. Woolverton and Ashman both wanted her to be a more modern, feminist heroine, while others resisted their vision and tried to make her a more traditional fairy tale heroine. (And while Woolverton has nothing but praise for Ashman and describes him as her ally and mentor, I don't feel as if his vision of Belle was quite the same as hers either: the feisty, sharp-witted, no-nonsense side of Belle is more evident in Woolverton's dialogue scenes, IMHO, while the free-spirited, passionate dreamer side of Belle is more in Ashman's lyrics.) Yet maybe that behind-the-scenes conflict was a blessing in disguise for the finished film. For me at least, an essential part of what makes Belle such a distinct and likable heroine is her balance of classic fairy tale qualities with modern qualities. I've been meaning to write a mini essay about this fact, and I still intend to in the near future.

Sleeping Beauty (1959, Clyde Geronimi, Eric Larson, Wolfgang Reitherman and Les Clark)

I grabbed all the PDFs and stuff from there while I still could. There are notes by Eric Larson, Glen Keane, and others, and some other misc stuff like templates and field guides