Disney observe animals & people before animating

Animators have studied, observed and animated animals for many years. Walt Disney actually thought observing people and animals was essential in making characters come to life.

Disney still does this today, most recently frogs were brought in for animators to sketch and observe for the frog characters in ‘The Princess and the Frog’.

“It’s really helpful for all the artists to study the real thing. That’s the basis of Walt Disney Animation, is you take the real thing and you caricature it and you observe it and you study it and then you reduce it down to its essence, and were really learning a lot, I think by looking at these creatures and these are really beautifully designed and so delicate.
We’ve got both the animators and clean up artists and storyboard artists and I think it’s helpful for all of them to really observe the real thing.
See how they move and see how their anatomy works.”(John Musker and Ron Clements - Directors of ‘The Princess and the Frog’ – accessed on 3rd Dec 09 - http://media.digisynd.com/AQAAAGUwOk2VYybTmM5Ap0ACo64n1xNn______ew0d3GH4DxoRgO5gvLQUGFp1h1/play;frame=AQAAADkROLWvBZN5l0DfUP3YqYcn1xNn_____wZugl5h__r_tzC363swRO1bw7gP/)


Many animators start animation by animating humans so it can be hard for them to animate animals without their previous knowledge of animating humans having an effect. This is can be a reason why animation has a lot of anthropomorphism.