The Unshakable Aspect

I've noticed it myself, but I've never thought all too much about it. Female characters in animation are constantly held behind the lens that we call "pretty". Really, this is present in all forms of visual art (most especially video games), but does the point hold water? Well over at Disney it appears there's been quite some controversy started over the matter. It even brought upon a sub-argument on the difficulty of animating women vs men. No matter if the causing statement was misinterpreted or not, here are the facts.

-Animation of male and female figures both pose challenges, but there isn't really a greater or lesser among the two. This is kind of obvious. Yes, men and women will display different mannerisms in movement, but under animation, both exist on nearly the same skeleton. You have the same basics of movement and the same anatomical limits. It's a little ignorant to argue one is harder when both are almost identical by core, and only minor in difference externally. On top of that, these traits aren't necessarily exclusive to either sex.

-Realism should still apply to some degree. No one looks good every single second, but when you're moving a hand drawn and rendered character around, you can pass that rule of reality. But should you? Humans are defined by imperfections, and when you have, so to say, a visually perfect character, it takes away a lot of that humanity. It is feared in the industry that the "pretty" image animators strive for is taken above all which can sacrifice any real human quality a character could possess. 

-Cookie cutter designs. It may be subjective, but the comparisons are uncanny. When you strive to make a very "pretty" character, you'll tend to pull yourself into an ideal image. When it comes to recent Disney animations, a creative GIF can give you all the evidence you need. Without imperfections, you will find yourself having the same features. Facial shapes trend, and eventually it's left to eye color and hair. At that point individuality is nearly lost. 

I found this a tougher article to analyze honestly, but just the same, I do have a couple opinions.

Like the third point, I really do feel we're seeing too little variance in female characters presented in visual arts. I do mostly blame this on the pursuit of attractiveness over individuality. It actually ties into one of my favorite tropes, the Six Faces http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OnlySixFaces

And that issue with the creative duty shift for Brave; I couldn't agree more with the original designer. That update was just cliche. It offended everything that the original established. You had something unique at first, but the update just made it into a product. Something to sell on shelves. And it's sad that we see this all too much. 

I hope we can overcome this creative rut at some point. Why do we stick to these age old ideals anyway? Is an attractive character really going to make us see a good movie any more than we would in the first place? Well, sure there's going to be the shallow few who only care about who the leads are and how they look, but them aside, does it make a difference to the rest of us moviegoers?