Animation

Disney had once announced that Home on the Range would be the studio’s last 2D animated film entry to their animated features canon, but after the company’s acquisition of Pixar in early 2006, it was reported that Ed Catmull and John Lasseter, new leaders of the animation department, had decided to re-open the door to Disney’s tradition of handdrawn animation.^] Ron Clements and John Musker, directors of successful 2D Disney films The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Hercules, will be writing and directing.

The film promises to return to the Broadway-style musical in the style of the successful Disney films like Walt’s classics, and the musical renaissance of the late-1980s and all of the 1990s. Rhett Wickham also reported that John Lasseter had personally asked Ron Clements and John Musker to direct and write the film, and had let them choose in what form (either traditional animation or CGI) they wanted the film to be made. New and updated software will be used in the digital processing of the film, as the old CAPS system from Disney is now outdated.

While the Goofy short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater experimented with paperless animation, the artists on The Princess and the Frog will use traditional pencil and paper that is scanned into the computers. Although a new pipeline for hand-drawn animation has been developed at the studio, like digital coloring without CAPS, the actual animation process remains the same. The visual effects on the other hand, as well as lot of the backgrounds, will be created digitally. Marlon West, one of Disney’s veteran animation visual effects supervisors, says about the production; “Those guys had this bright idea to bring back hand-drawn animation, but everything had to be started again from the ground up. One of the first things we did was focus on producing shorts, to help us re-introduce the 2D pipeline. I worked as vfx supervisor on the Goofy short, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater. It was a real plus for the effects department, so we went paperless for The Princess and the Frog.”

The former trend in Disney’s hand-drawn features where the characters were influenced by a CGI-look has been abandoned. Andreas Deja says “I always thought that maybe we should distinguish ourselves to go back to what 2D is good at, which is focusing on what the line can do rather than volume, which is a CG kind of thing. So we are doing less extravagant Treasure Planet kind of treatments. You have to create a world but [we're doing it more simply]. What we’re trying to do with Princess and the Frog is hook up with things that the old guys did earlier. It’s not going to be graphic…”. He also mentions that Lasseter is aiming for the Disney sculptural and dimensional look of the ’50s. “He quoted all those things that were non graphic, which means go easy on the straight lines and have one volume flow into the other — an organic feel to the drawing.”

On August 4, 2008, the official website was launched with the first teaser trailer of the movie.

On May 9, 2009, the official trailer was premiered on The Disney Channel.

Music

On November 13, 2006, it was revealed that Randy Newman, who is responsible for the music of five Pixar films, would be in charge of the music in the film instead of Alan Menken and his new lyricist Glenn Slater. This change was due to John Lasseter not wanting the public to feel Disney being repetitive, as Menken was also working on another Disney fairy tale film, Enchanted.

During the Walt Disney Company’s annual shareholder meeting in March 2007, Randy Newman and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band performed a song from the film called “Down in New Orleans”, while slides of pre-production art from the film played on a screen. Other songs include “Almost There” (a solo for Tiana), “Dig a Little Deeper” (a song for Mama Odie), “When We’re Humans” (a song for Louis, Tiana & Naveen (as frogs)), “Friends on the Other Side” (a solo for Doctor Facilier), and “Gonna Take you There” and “Ma Belle Evangeline” (two solos for Ray).

Album with all the Songs from the movie Princess and the Frog will be released by Walt Disney Music on the 24th of December 2009. You can directly go to the Disney music site to purchase the CD by clicking on the picture of the CD album.

Voice cast

On December 1, 2006, a detailed casting call was announced for the film at the Manhattan Theatre Source forum. The casting call states the film as being an American fairy tale musical set in New Orleans during the 1920s Jazz Age, and provides a detailed list of the film’s major characters, including the leading character, who at that point was to be called Maddy. Disney later officially confirmed this.

In February 2007, it was reported that Jennifer Hudson and Anika Noni Rose were top contenders for the voice of the princess, and that Alicia Keys directly contacted Disney’s studio chief Dick Cook, telling him that she wanted the role very much. It was later revealed that Tyra Banks was considered for the role as well. On April 19, 2007, it was confirmed that Anika Noni Rose would be voicing Princess Tiana. On July 5, 2007, it was reported that Keith David would be doing the voice of Dr. Facilier, the villain of the film.