Bancroft Tom - Creating Characters with Personality

Creating characters has never been easy for me. The designs dont give themselves up without a struggle; there are no formulas for a quick and easy path. To design a character I do hundreds of drawings, exploring and waiting for that moment of recognition when I can see the face of the character I am searching for staring back at me. That is the magic moment I am always working to achieve.

I remember the process of finding the Beast for Beauty and the Beast. What would he look like? I had done a myriad of designs and looked at many other artists versions as well. Any one of the designs could have been an acceptable Beastbut I just knew it wasnt the Beast who lived and breathed in our story. My walls were covered with pictures of wild animals of every sort. Lions, bears, tigers, gorillas, mandrills, and wolves. I had one storyboard that was filled with nothing but horns: some that twisted, some that spiraled, short ones, curved ones. I had countless close-ups of eyes, nostrils, and teeth. For months I drew combinations of these elementsstrange, hybrid creatures with every permutation of horn, tooth, and facial feature imaginablebut I never achieved that deeply satisfying Ah-ha! moment.

Then one day an animator on my team asked me, So whats the Beast gonna look like? He stood behind me looking over my shoulder as I sketched, and I explained that I liked the sadness of the buffalo head, the softness of the lions mane, and the ferocious muzzle of the wild boar. I continued condensing my room full of reference photos into one cohesive drawingand the Beast suddenly appeared. Thats Him! It was as if he had always existed, and I was finally able to coax him onto my paper.

This kind of search is personal and intense, so much so that the characters we create seem truly to live and breathe in our imagination. One of the great rewards of our craft is knowing that the close attachment we feel to our characters will be shared by the thousands who will believe in them as well. Designing characters is a magical process, and its wonderful to have this book in our handsa book, long overdue, that finally explores our craft in-depth. Enjoy.

Glen Keane

Supervising Animator/Director

Walt Disney Feature Animation