What's the Appeal?

“We seem to know when to ‘tap the heart.’ Others have hit the intellect. We can hit them in an emotional way. Those who appeal to the intellect only appeal to a very limited group. The real thing behind this is: we are in the motion picture business, only we are drawing them instead of photographing them.” - Walt Disney


Appeal compliments the Mood of animation, which was previously discussed in Chapter 5. Body movement has a huge part in having a character be relatable to the audience, as well as keeping the suspension of disbelief strong in movies and television. You can't have one without the other, or audiences will become disinterested in what they are watching because they may not think the characters are all that interesting. Take the movie "Inside Out" for example. The main characters are all emotions! Each one is relatable in their own way to what human emotion they represent. EVERY human has emotions! So when the character Anger gets, well angry, we can relate, because we've all been angry! We've all been happy, sad, disgusted, scared, and angry, and the appeal of these characters come from the body language and facial expressions they express when they portray their corresponding emotion.

Characters from Inside Out

The Dreamworks Logo before every of their movies

I don't believe that Disney is the only one that brings this sort of "magic" to the table. Dreamworks films are very appealing due to their relatable characters in movies like "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Kung Fu Panda" Even though they take place in fantasy lands, the main characters are have very  human like qualities (I mean, Hiccup is human, but most other Dreamworks movies are usually animals or magical creatures) who every audience member can relate to in their own way. People come to watch Dreamworks movies because of how cute and magical the movies can be, despite not being made by Disney, the art style and movements of characters keep audiences coming for more as Dreamworks makes a new film every couple of years. Disney hasn't cornered the market yet, but with their acquisitions of Marvel and Star Wars, they're getting super close.  It's almost a little scary.