Characters and Brave.

Brave is one of my favourite animated features from the past few years. Brave, released in 2012, is set in the Scottish highlands and tells the story of princess Merida who brings chaos in the kingdom by defying an age-old custom concerning princes asking for her hand. She stumbles upon a witch who provides her with a spell with a different outcome than she had anticipated. She accidentally transforms her mother into a bear and has little time to turn her back before it's too late.

I always really loved Pixar's approach on character design, since unlike Disney, Pixar tends to push a bit more over the "set boundaries" of how the lead characters should look like. Sure, in Tangled there are heaps of characters that don't fit the average mould, but these are all extras and background characters, while Pixar on the other hand still has a huge diversity when it concerns its main characters. (This difference is especially visible to me in the Incredibles. Perhaps I'll talk another time about that) I also think that in Brave besides the great main characters (Merida and the mother as a bear) the rest of the "main cast" is the rest of her family and the other clan leaders and their sons.

Merida is one of the most gorgeous girls I've seen in an animated feature and I think that has to do with her down to earth design. Merida's bodily features are really "human" to me, wide hips, average waist, short stature, not too skinny arms (and I'm not sure if the legs are visible that much?). Top it all off with the explosion of a hairdo and it feels really close to the audience, unlike the too perfectness that you often see on screen. While I must admit that like in other features, the main women are made really gorgeous and men seem to get more diversity or extremities in their design, Brave tends to follow this trend as well.
Elinor has a similar "more humanlike" body type like Merida, but a face with more realistic features and proportions. I think this was done to first: make her look older (which she of course is), but also to make her look a bit more stern and serious, while Merida's round face with the bright blue round eyes and still tiny-ish nose reveals she is still young.

Fergus is a beast of a man with it's great stature and square body shape. He isn't simply overlooked and it's probably not easy to go past this man. In his great chest, broad shoulders and arms hides a very humorous and loveable father who enjoys storytelling and playing with his children more than actually really seriously ruling his kingdom. Unlike Elinor and Merida, Fergus has the look of the image we know of vikings and how they are displayed in modern culture and stories (great, monstrous men). 

The triplets are male copies of the child version of Merida that is shown in the movie: same round shape of face, size of the eyes and colours. Only real difference to me is the hair. Since the boys don't talk in the film, you'd think they would make some changes in the design to distinguish them from each other, but I feel the creators made them look exactly the same (Except for one curl of hair) for a purpose. Since the boys don't speak, they are no different characters of their own, but a whole. The triplets are basically one character and a visual display of mischief.

The witch is actually a really lovely lady, so I find it hilarious that she has a design similar to designs of "evil witches", displayed in other films. This makes it seem to me that well doing witches are in fact the same old ladies as the evil witches, there is no concrete difference needed in the design to make witch look "good".  (Because basically, if the witch is gorgeous, there's something wrong with her doing, i.e. Mother Gothel and the stepmother of Snow White) Back to the woodcarver witch. She is just a tiny old lady, hunched forward with bony fingers and arms and I find it all really intriguing since she has such a lively performance in the film.

The clan lords Macintosh, Dingwall and MacGuffin are representations of other stereotypes concerning Scottish people and northern "viking" folk. You have the big bearlike stature (like Fergus, but a bit more toned down), the really tiny loud old men and the "Braveheart" look alike being all "gorgeous and handsome". Their sons are physical "copies" of their fathers in a younger body, while their personalities are completely in contrast with their father beliefs, and the way this is portrayed in their poses reveals how tiny details in designing not only the physical appearance but as well in personality design, can change how a character looks in a film.