Making The Little Mermaid (1992), by Andreas Deja
A Guest Post to the Riding with the Mouse Net-log by animator Terrell Little
Hi, everyone, Iām Andreas and my friend and fellow Disney animator Terrell asked me to contribute to his net-log. Be sure to also see
my net-log post, with some additional pieces of the artwork that I made. Now, I generally do not write much in my posts. I prefer to let the artwork speak. But Terrell is twisting my arm, the bastard!
King Triton pencil test by Andreas Deja (Image source Deja View blog)
So, where do we begin with
The Little Mermaid? All the way back to Kay Nielsenās test art in the 1940s? That was intended to be a short as part of a Hans Christian Andersen biopic. Our archivist dug them up when we started seriously looking into production in the late 1980s. Or perhaps I should speak of Ron Clements and his quest since the mid-1980s to get the film greenlit? Heād come across the original story and really wanted to do it, but other projects came first.
Kay Nielsen concept art (Image source āsurlalunefairytales.blogspot.comā)
Weāll just say that there was a long production on this film!
We entered active production late in 1989. Jim was hoping for something very āold schoolā Disney. Roy wanted more princesses. While others worked with Ghibli on
The Bamboo Princess, Ron recruited me as art director, helping Ron and John [Musker] set the style and tone of the animation since he loved what Iād done with
Mistress Masham. We took some style cues from Nielsen, which is why stylistically it reminds so many people of
Sleeping Beauty. We won an Annie for the art direction because of it.
Music-wise, weād hoped to get Howard Ashman and Alan Menken to do the soundtrack, but they were beyond busy between
Mort and
Aladdin and
The Song of Susan. Ron did manage to get some advice from Howard on where to take the Sea Witch, a character that we just couldnāt figure out what to do with, and Howard wrote some lyrics for her villain song, āPoor, Unfortunate Souls.ā
Original Sea Witch concept art by Kay Nielsen and various Musker concept art (Image source The Paris Review & Pinterest)
Instead, Howard introduced us to Freddie Mercury, whoād been writing the soundtrack for
The Song of Susan. āHeās the best lyricist I know,ā Howard said. Thatās huge praise! Freddie was super excited to work on it. Heās a bit of a kid like the rest of us. Playing in the Disney sandbox was a lot of fun for him. And Freddie had always loved[1] the story of
The Little Mermaid, so it all worked out!
And just like Howard really kind of took over
Mistress Masham in spirit, so did Freddie take over
The Little Mermaid. Freddie ran to some degree with the tone set by Howardās Ursula, who (and hereās a little secret that still makes Roy a little uncomfortable when he hears us talk about it) is really based on the drag queen Divine! Freddieās songs were so full of confidence and barely constrained emotion, and that carried over into the characters. Ariel is a girl who knows what she wants. Prince Eric, meanwhile, is a confused man whose external expectations blind him to the happiness beside him. Ursula is the Queen Bitch of the Ocean and knows it. Triton is a stubborn father and king. Freddie and Brian May as arranger gave a very rock-operatic feel to things. Howard told us that heād have made things calypso and turned Clarence the Crab into a Jamaican, but Freddie leaned on the whole Scandinavian thing and made everything what can only be described as āRock Wagner[2]ā.
His songs were great. āThe World Aboveā has such a lyricism and longing. āThe Girl of my Dreamsā is passionate and laced with irony as Prince Eric longs for the woman who saved him as the silent Ariel next to him, who unknown to him
is that girl, longs for him. Its later reprieve is so full of emotion even I still tear up at it. Each song became a like a milepost for us to animate around.
Hearing the actual voice actors record was a special delight. On Howardās recommendation we found stage actress Jodi Benson to voice Ariel. We found Paul Hipp for the role of Prince Eric, just coming off of a run as Buddy Holly in the original West End run of
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. Kenneth Mars was sublime as King Triton. Jennifer Saunders just nailed it as Ursula and Rowan Atkinson was a delightful boor as Clarence[3]. And Kath Soucie brought the manipulative third point of the love triangle, the Duchess Katrine, to life.
(Image source Pinterest)
I took a year off to work on
Porco Rosso and then almost immediately got recruited to work on
The Bamboo Princess because of it, but was back in time to finish up post production and see the final project completed. Howard had passed by that point, but his āPoor Unfortunate Soulsā lived on.
I am proud of what we accomplished.
[1] Speculating here.
[2] Not to be confused with
Rock Lobster.
[3] Hat tip to
@Plateosaurus for Sanders and
@Nathanoraptor for Atkinson. Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson will voice Ursulaās snarky eel companions.
