The Creation of Flynn Rider

The day that Tangled (2010) came out on DVD, I went to Best Buy, picked up a copy, and immediately went home to watch the bonus features. One of the most interesting parts of this behind-the-scenes look at Tangled was seeing how much effort the animators put into creating Flynn Rider's appearance. I don't know if this is just me, but I never think about the fact that someone had to pick every little feature of a character's image, from the way his hair falls to the color of his shirt. In this special feature, the movie's directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard talk about the process that they went through to finalize the appearance of Flynn Rider. Basically, the taped pictures of Hollywood's most attractive stars around a room and then called in female employees that worked in the animation building. The job of these females was to tell the animators what features they liked and didn't like about each star. Then, the animators came up with hundreds of potential drawings depicting Flynn Rider. In some he looked like a bodybuilder with long hair, while in others he was rather scrawny. These animators had thought of almost every possible combination of handsome features for a male character. Then, they brought the female employees back to analyze the drawings. Using the input from these women, the animators finally created a character that had warm, brown eyes to match his brunette hair (which, according to the women, made him seem less egotistical), was toned but not too muscular, and had a little bit of facial hair to give him a slight edge. I loved watching this clip because I had never thought about the intense process that goes into designing every single character in an animated movie, and now every time I watch animated movies I think about how different the movie would feel if one character had looked different.