Soooo, I wanted to examine the Beast and the Prince's design. It's well known that the Prince's design is viewed as pretty underwhelming, especially when compared to Beast's much more striking design.
Even the creative minds behind the movie knew, before it released in theaters, that no matter what they designed, people were going to prefer the Beast over the Prince. The audience spent the entire movie endearing themselves to the Beast, and the Prince feels like a stranger comparatively.(They say as much during the commentary for the movie.)
And, honestly, the disappointment is very understandable.
But, I wanted to take a closer look and discuss why they were designed the way they were, bc I've never seen anyone bring up these particular points before, and I thought it'd be fun to share my thoughts
First off, why does his design look so different from the Beast?
The only thing that stays the same after the transformation are his eyes. Even his hair and fur color are different. Why is that?
Well, the reason for that is bc the Beast is a hybrid chimera of different animals.
Glen Keane describes the Beast's design here:
I said, “I like the massiveness of this buffalo head”, and I sketched out the weight, “and of this buffalo head”, I said, “But the brow of the gorilla,” and I drew the brow there. “But then the muzzle of this wild boar,” and then the mane of a lion but the body of a bear, and then the legs of this wolf.
As I did it, it just all came together. And like I was telling you before, there’s this moment where you recognize the character. And I looked at it, and I said, “That’s him. That’s what he looks like, like that, Bruce. That’s what – that’s the Beast.”
One of the most prominent animals in Beast's design is that of a bison. So his coloration correlates moreso to the animal, not the person. We also have a rainbow of other shades of brown mixed in, likely coming from the wild boar, bear, and whatever else.
The Beast's design was never meant to match what the Prince's design actually looked like. It's just building off the animals the Beast is made from. It was meant to be a cool monster design that contrasts what the Prince actually looks like.
The eyes are the only thing that stay the same, as a visual cue to tell the audience/Belle that he and the Beast are the same person.
Secondly, his human design makes so much more sense when you realize that he was likely heavily based off of Michaelangelo's David.
The Prince is supposed to be unbelievably beautiful and handsome. It ties back to the themes of the story - despite his beauty, and having everything he ever wanted, he had no kindness or love in his heart, which is why he ended up cursed.
Knowing that, it makes sense that they would choose to base his design off of something as magnificent as one of the greatest sculptures ever created.
However, given it's a beautiful sculpture, specifically a highly detailed and realistic one depicting the complexities of the human form, it makes trying to capture that beauty in motion... extremely difficult.
And, even if he wasn't based on David specifically, he was definitely inspired by this era and style of art, which shares all of the previously mentioned problems.
Which is why, in practice, the Prince looks... off.
The transformation sequence was one of the very last pieces of animation done on the movie, and that includes animating the final design of the Prince.
Beauty and the Beast was made in basically 2 years time. Most films around this period took 4 years to produce, but halfway through production, they were told to rewrite the entire story from scratch and start all over. So it was already starting off at a disadvantage.
Glen Keane only had so much time to work on this part, and not nearly enough time to familiarize himself with the Prince's design enough to make animating him feel natural. And that goes for any of the other artists working with him, including cleanup and assistants.
Knowing that, the Prince's occasional awkward animation near the end becomes much more understandable.
The unfortunate part is that, because the Prince has such a classical, high art inspired design, and so few scenes that properly showcase it well enough for the audience to understand the reference and endear themselves to it, it's become difficult for people to recreate it in any meaningful way.
In fact, most of the official books have art of the Prince that vary from decent...
.... To just plain awful.
In fact, the bad far, far outways the good here. Half of them don't even look like the Prince.
It's rare enough to get official art of the Prince in the first place, bc most of the merchandising is focused on the Beast since that design is more iconic. But it's even rarer to get good art of him.
The poor guy has it rough.
(I do wonder if this could've helped fuel dissatisfaction for the Prince's design. bc the movie came out at a time where getting good visuals of films was a much more difficult task, and so the only way to really get a good, long look at him were through the associated picture books...
... Which, clearly, did him absolutely no favors.)
But all that aside, it's not impossible to make use of the Prince's design as originally intended. The potential is there.
One of the best examples is from the Mirrorverse manga.
He's drawn consistently handsome, while keeping his original design in mind.
Which proves that the design absolutely can work, if given a little tweaks and wiggle room.
The manga even gives us this cool half-Beast design, giving the Prince horns, tusks, claws, and animal ears (at least for one panel on that last one).
It's honestly such a cool design concept, that I wish we saw more of it outside of this manga.
Anyway uhhhhhhhhh idk how to end this, I just kinda wanted to ramble about this topic lol
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