 Glen Keane was the supervising animator of Beast. In the early concept art, Beast was mandrill-inspired, later developing to incorporate elements of the bear and wolf, but with most of the inspiration drawn from the buffalo. Only his horns were, as Keane says, '..just something we gave him ourselves.'
Determined to go to considerable lengths to find inspiration for his character, Keane asked to be allowed into a zoo cage with a temperamental gorilla, in order to get a feeling for what is was like to be so close to the huge beast. Fortunately, he was denied the opportunity...
Of a...
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 Belle, the go-it-alone, independent heroine and salvation of Beast was animated by James Baxter. Receiving a series of 'battlefield promotions' during production on Who Framed Roger Rabbit and later on Beauty and the Beast, this moved Baxter into the animation of a major character.
Belle's appearance was developed from a sketch by story man Roger Allers, slightly modified to give her 'a more European look' - the shape and angle of her eyes, in particular, were intended to give her a more mature appearance than earlier heroines. Inspiration for angle and perspective - cruc...
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 The self-styled 'ideal man' for Belle underwent some changes during Deja's development of him. Early loutish charicatures went (along with a dubious moustache) and in came a smoother, more handsome village braggart. Apparently research for the Gaston physique (and the attitude too, perhaps) came from visits to an LA gym - where real-life counterparts of the character worked out...
Deja sums up Gaston:
'God, I know such people; Los Angeles is full of them.'
After joining Disney in 1980, Deja was one of the team who worked on The Black Cauldron. Later credits include...
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 A self-confessed love of the 'British deadpan character' (hehheh), Finn was perfectly suited to Cogsworth, as was David Ogden-Stiers, who provided the supercilious character with the ideal voice.
As with all the 'enchanted objects', it was a problem to make the animation look natural - as if the characters really could move in the way they did. (One trick I'm glad they didn't use was 'Hell, we can't draw that. Just make 'em fly or something.') The model sheets in The Art of Animation show how the anatomies of all the objects were carefully analysed and...
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 Lumiere's name, in French, means light - perfectly appropriate!
The Lumiere-Cogsworth partnership (!?) provides many great sequences. Ranieri faced many of the same challenges as Finn and Pruiksma in animating a candelabrum, but pulled it off spectacularly - Lumiere is the perfect foil to the pompous Cogsworth; and the two are essential to the humour and charm of the film.
Lumiere is another character for whom the model sheets make fascinating reading. There are numerous directions to the animators and clean-up personnel regarding the range of movements allowed, how to draw certain a...
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 While Glen Keane was deliberately kept from seeing Robby Benson during his work on Beast, Dave Pruiksma studied Angela Lansbury in order to create the character of Mrs Potts - although, apparently, he never actually met her. He was impressed by her subtle mannerisms, and incorporated many of them into the final character.
While Mrs Potts is very much an interpretation of Angela Lansbury, her teacup-son emerged from the shadows thanks to Bradley Pierce, the boy who provided his voice. Jeffrey Katzenburg liked his performance so much that he insisted Chip's role (initially minor) was stren...
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