Here’s How 25 Disney Characters Looked In Their Original Concept Art

Back in 2004, a very talented illustrator called Claire Keane started working at Walt Disney Animation Studios as a concept artist. Being the daughter of the very talented animator Glen Keane, Claire was surrounded by this type of art her entire life. In 2006, Claire started working on Tangled. Claire had an amazing opportunity to work alongside her talented father who was the director of Tangled, so it's safe to say that we should be very thankful for the Keane family that this incredible movie exists. In one of the interviews, Glen Keane even said that Rapunzel's personality was very much based on Claire's childhood persona.
While working on this animation, Claire studied a lot of Scandinavian and medieval arts, she was also heavily inspired by Charley Harper.
This particular concept art of Rapunzel was inspired by a painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau who used mythological themes in his realistic paintings and emphasized the female body in his work. While describing her creative journey Claire said:
"While working on Tangled, I wanted to better understand the character of Rapunzel and what she did all day so I kept a journal of the things I did at home and translated it into Rapunzel’s world. It helped me see her as a real person who lived beyond the scenes and plot points of the movie. Rapunzel became somebody I could relate to even though our circumstances were worlds apart. This research helped me later on when I designed her murals."

It was Marc Davis's (the man behind Cruella De Vil's character) task to create Tinker Bell's look since Davis has already proven his talent in creating outstanding female characters. Because Tinker Bell didn't speak, animating her was a bit different than what Davis was used to, there was a need for a very strong expression of emotions through movement which wasn't easy to portray. Tinker Bell's character was a bit different than what we were usually used to seeing in Disney character drawings, she was a modern and independent woman. The pixie's look resembled pin-up girls that were popular in the media at that time, many even compared her to Marilyn Monroe.

It seems impossible to talk about Disney and not mention Glen Keane. Just like many other famous characters, Pocahontas's portrayal was also the work of Keane. What's interesting is that while creating this persona, the artist faced a rather difficult task, he was asked by Jeffrey Katzenberg to create "the most idealized and finest woman ever made." To complete this request Keane took inspiration from such women as Filipino model Dyna Taylor, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, he also used a 1620 depiction of Pocahontas from a history book, though he later explained that she was "not exactly a candidate for People's 'Most Beautiful' issue." It took 55 animators to create the final Pocahontas.

Ursula's character was at first designed to look like a "tall, thin regal-looking sea witch" and was based on a scorpion fish. Later, the animator behind this character Glen Keane took inspiration from a drag queen named Divine and decided to make Ursula look more like a "vampy overweight matron." The final character even has Divine's signature makeup, jewelry, and body type.

After Disney bought Pixar back in 2006, movies that are now considered to belong to Disney started carrying very Pixar-like features that are usually quite different from what we're used to seeing in Disney movies. For example, Pixar usually tends to design their characters to be caricatured. Even though the adorable Carl's character from the movie Up wasn't really supposed to be a caricature, it still has some features that clearly belong to the Pixar tradition; such as a nose shaped like a balloon and a not proportional head that is definitely not natural-looking, and definitely not something we are used to seeing in Disney movies.

Tarzan is the 37th full-length Disney movie and was animated in two different countries at the same time, one part was done in California while another part was produced in Paris. Animator Glen Keane worked on Tarzan's portrayal in California, and Ken Duncan worked on Jane's character in Paris, this type of team-work caused a lot of inconveniences when it came to creating scenes of Jane and Tarzan together. The teams managed to co-operate by sending each other hundreds of animations and constantly organizing video conferences. Another interesting fact, Jane's characteristics and mannerisms in the movie were also based on Minnie Driver that served as a voice actress for the movie.

Belle's character was created by James Baxter and Mark Henn. This was not the first Disney princess for Henn, he had previously worked on Ariel, Jasmine, Mulan, and Tiana. Because of his achievements Henn was considered the "go-to man behind many Disney princesses." One of the main goals was to give Belle a more European-look, so they added fuller lips, narrower eyes and darker eyebrows, she also had "a little wisp of hair that kept falling in her face", as it was previously described by Woolverton. One of the main inspirations behind Belle's look was Vivien Leigh and Audrey Hepburn.

The mysterious Alice character was created by Mary Blair, an extremely talented artist who worked on other outstanding Disney films such as Pinocchio and Peter Pan. What had the biggest impact to Blair's style was a trip to South Africa alongside Walt Disney where she fell in love with the colors and forms of their mesmerizing culture. For the next 10 years after her trip Mary used a lot of motifs in her work that were taken from South American cultures. Since the story of Alice In Wonderland is often described using a french word loufoques (meaning very strange or even ridiculous), it was rather difficult for Walt Disney to find a way to portray the story the way it is written in the original book. To find the best artistic solutions he invited Mary Blair since he considered her to be the most talented artists to work there. It's safe to say, that Mary definitely delivered an outstanding art piece that is absolutely ageless.

Maleficent's character was created by Marc Davis who is also responsible for Cruella De Vil's and Tinker Bell's characters. Andreas Deja, a man who worked at Walt Disney for 30 years, created a blog post dedicated to Marc Davi's concept of Maleficent. According to him, the first sketches showed Maleficent wearing black and red since it had a strong meaning to Davis but the background stylist Eyving Earle was keen to use other colors so they settled for black with purple. As Andreas says, "Sometimes teamwork isn't easy."