Tiana (Disney) - Development - Design and Characteristics

Design and Characteristics

Mark Henn served as the supervising animator for Tiana. Henn was hired by Lasseter because he had animated nearly every Disney Princess since The Little Mermaid's Ariel. Describing Tiana, Henn said that she is following "a new trend in our princesses," likening her to Ariel from The Little Mermaid. When animating Tiana, Henn was inspired by voice actress Anika Noni Rose, borrowing from her dimples and left-handedness. Henn was also inspired by studio employee Jaimie Milner, a film intern who was working in post production. The fact that Tiana is African American was "never a big issue" for Henn when it came to animating her, but drawing her as both a human and a frog proved difficult. "Tiana appears in the movie in so many different forms...she's a little girl, she's an adult human, and then she's a frog".

Rose's thoughts, ideas and concerns were taken into consideration when it came to finalizing Tiana's design. "I...said I wanted it to look like she ate and wasn’t skinny, and she has a full mouth and a little round nose and curly hair and these are all things that made her look distinctly herself." Rose didn't want Tiana to resemble "a cookie-cutter princess who had been coloured in brown. When I saw her for the first time and realized how much she looked like me I was really blown away." Rose also served as a form of visual, live-action reference for supervising animator Mark Henn as he worked on Tiana, videotaping her as she recorded her lines and incorporating some of her distinct characteristics, such as her dimples and left-handedness, into Tiana's design.