There was a time when Disney princesses were neatly packaged and always pristine and pretty. Ariel was the first to break from that box. I remember my mentors Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston said after the opening of The Little Mermaid that they would never have animated Ariel that way. I asked, ‘Why?’
“They said, ‘Because you drew her face with ugly expressions at times when we were very careful to only draw our princesses with prettiest of expressions.’ And I realized that this was a new generation of acting. Anytime we had a choice to choose pretty or real we would always choose real. The authentic emotion is our goal.