# How do animated movies keep consistent character looks throughout the entire thing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 28, 2005, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-animated-movies-keep-consistent-character-looks-throughout-the-entire-thing/318958 "2005-08-28T06:53:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![muttrox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a8b319/32.png) [@muttrox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muttrox)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-animated-movies-keep-consistent-character-looks-throughout-the-entire-thing/318958/21 "2005-08-29T10:23:28Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > While on vacation, we turned on some very old Warner Bros. cartoons. Bugs Bunny was slightly different-looking. No doubt some old cartoon afficionados can tell us when and why Bugs was altered. I suppose I am an affecionado. I can distinctly tell which of the major WB animator/directors did any Bugs Bunny cartoon up to around ~1980. (I refuse to recognize the awful awful cartoons after that as actual Bugs Bunny cartoons). The difference in animation between Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Friz Freling, etc. Note that it’s not just Bug’s head and body (though there are clear differences there), but the way the characters move, the timing of their motions, backgrounds style, balance of scene, etc. Just about everyone can tell a good Chuck Jones cartoon from the others, even if they aren’t sophisticated enough to understand what is different. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-animated-movies-keep-consistent-character-looks-throughout-the-entire-thing/318958/22 "2005-08-29T11:45:26Z")
Just wanted to note that the character _changes_ noted above – Daffy Duck’s appearance, and Bugs Bunny’s , and especially Elmer Fudd’s – were prettty much deliberate and inended. The OP asked about keeping consistency from animator to animator (within, I suspect, a single cartoon), which is a differenmt question. As I noted, even for a single cartoobn you can get variation. (That’s sometimes intentional, too. Look at Jessica Rabbit – the size of her hands varies from shot to shot. Sometimes, I think, it’s because the animators were animating directly over a real actor’s hand – as when she grabs Eddie Valiuant’s tie during her singing number – and sometimes it’s for other reasons. In some shots it seems they deliberately made her hands tiny in order to emphasize her already considerable bust.) ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-animated-movies-keep-consistent-character-looks-throughout-the-entire-thing/318958/23 "2005-08-29T13:48:05Z")
It’s sometimes really easy to spot the key pose frames in even the best animation (though it’s much easier to spot it in low rent stuff, like the TV Disney) by the way the in-between frames seem to move from pose to pose at a very even pace, when it should be more gradual. It comes across a bit jerky. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2005, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-animated-movies-keep-consistent-character-looks-throughout-the-entire-thing/318958/24 "2005-08-29T16:42:32Z")
In Disney’s **Beauty and the Beast** the look of the prince changes radically (and not for the better) between the transformation and ballroom scenes at the end. Very distracting… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-animated-movies-keep-consistent-character-looks-throughout-the-entire-thing/318958.md?page=1)