Disney Animation guides Tiana’s next chapter
Along for our New Orleans adventure was Walt Disney Animation Studios VFX artist Marlon West, who worked on The Princess and the Frog. In a presentation at YAYA, he discussed how the studio is still playing a huge role in the attraction to continue the film’s legacy. Imagineers shared that in addition to the animatronics, there would be animation in the ride itself to bring to life the fireflies from the film. West knew quite a bit about those light-up bugs and shared what it took to bring them onto the big screen, “I’m from St. Louis so I kinda grew up with fireflies,” he said. “We had this edict about The Princess and the Frog—[it] was a hand-drawn movie, they didn’t want any CG stuff, [but] there’s a lot of fireflies in Princess and the Frog and we weren’t going to draw all those rascals. All the fireflies you see with faces are hand-drawn fireflies, but not the ones that are just dots, the ones that don’t have have bodies.”
