Inside Out 2’s female emotions finally get to look weird

polygon.com:

When director Kelsey Mann took the helm on Pixar’s Inside Out 2, Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter had one big suggestion for him. Before becoming CCO, Docter directed many of the studio’s greatest hits, including the originalInside Out.

At an early press preview going behind the scenes on Inside Out 2, Mann told Polygon that the interior world of Inside Out in Riley’s mind was supposed to be more “cartoony” than the realism-grounded outside world. But Mann says Docter told him the final product — 2015’s Inside Out — didn’t quite land the way he wanted.

“He said, We thought we were going far with what we could do with the characters inside the mind, in terms of how broadly they moved and were animated,” Mann recounts. “I think we could have gone further. And I kind of regret not dialing that up a little bit. So I highly suggest that you go further. I remember talking to the whole animation department pitching the movie, and saying we wanted to do that. I feel like we’ve done a lot of that on the film — I really tried to push it.”

That’s especially true when it comes to the character design. In the original movie, which centers on an 11-year-old girl and the personifications of emotions in her head, Fear and Anger have distinctly cartoony designs. Their exaggerated shapes are meant to evoke the emotions they represent. But the emotions embodied by female characters don’t capture that same feeling. Joy, Sadness, and Disgust look more generic, and apart from their bright, jewel-toned skin and hair, they could easily pass as human characters in another Disney or Pixar movie. (Joy in particular launched a significant discussion about the longtime problem of Disney Princesses all having the same face, and Pixar following the trend, designing all its female protagonists with round faces and button noses).

But from the very first trailer, it was clear that Inside Out 2’s new emotions would be different. The new movie introduces Anxiety, a Muppet-like emotion