Going way, way back to July of this year I was so lucky to attend and all expense paid trip to LA for a Disney Press Trip. While I was there I did a number of things and one of those was to attend an Early Press Day for Ralph Breaks The Internet. I’ve posted about some of that experience already including interviewing the directors and talking about the creation of the overall story, locations and more! One of the last things that we did was learn about a particular scene that I am sure everyone is aware of, the princess scene or the Oh My Disney scene. In Ralph Breaks the Internet Disney pokes some fun at itself within the safe space of Oh My Disney, Disney’s home on The Internet. It is here that Vanellope meets all of the Disney Princesses.

We met with Co-writer Pamela Ribon who discussed the inspiration for the scene, and Ami Thompson (Art Director, characters) and Kira Lehtomaki (Head of Animation) who presented the work that went into bringing these beloved characters into the world of The Internet. As with all things related to movie making this process took a long time and many people were involved in the creation of the scene. So many people had to come together to pull this off. In fact, they even got all of the living princesses together for the first time ever because of this. The only princess with a new voice is Snow White and she is played by Pamela Ribon.

The idea came about because Vanellope needs something that will go viral and getting a selfie with all of the Disney Princesses would be viral. The idea came out of what about Vanellope, isn’t she a Disney princess, too? If so, then how does she fit into that world and what type of princess was she. Because of this question Pamela started looking at all the different princess related tropes that show up in the movies, through research into this we get all the hilarious questions that the princesses ask Vanellope when she inadvertently ends up in their dressing room.

Pamela came up with the idea for the Oh My Disney scene by asking the question, “I don’t know why Vanellope isn’t canon”. She began to think about what it would be like if Vanellope met all the other Disney princesses and they would want to know what kind of princess she was. That started off the idea. When Pamela met with Rich (Moore) and Phil (Johnston) they knew that they wanted to do a “meta” scene and this would be the perfect place for it. Pamela began her research and consulted with her friend Elise who was a big princess fan who made plenty of suggestions. I think she got more than she bargained for in that conversation which really helped with her first draft. But, she hit upon something amazing because much of her first draft is intact in the movie.

When Pamela presented the scene to everyone Rich Moore said, “Do you think we can get away with this?” They storyboarded it with no notes. What this could have meant was it was bad and no one liked it or it was so good that it had to be done this way. It was the latter. Pamela showed us some of the early storyboards and the scratch voices. Pamela did all of them in screening one. When they do these screenings it is a tough room, there are all the directors, writers and even directors and writers of many of the princes movies who saw that for the first time. They applauded. They then made the scene and showed it at D23.

The conversation went over to Ami and she talked about the character design of the princesses. Some of the princesses have only been in 2D so what would they look like in a 3D world. All of the princesses had to look like they were all in the same world. They came up with an Oh My Disney design of each of the princesses. She then showed all of the princesses in their “comfy” looks. Every great princesses movie has a “makeover” scene and in this case the makeover was to get these characters into comfy clothes. They were able to let their hair down but still retain their style and personality through what they were doing and wearing.

At first they were all going to be in pajamas but realized that was too relaxed. So, they decided to model the comfy looks as inspired by Vanellope’s look. Her hoodie and leggings and was the right tone to hit upon. One fun fact was that in the original Cinderella movie, you never see her ears. So, in the designs they decided to show her ears. We also saw all the t-shirts that will soon be the most coveted items that people will want after seeing this movie. By now you have seen these designs in the movie but for us to see it so early it was amazing. Each princess has something that references their movies. The art department had a lot of fun designing all the shirts and characters in their comfy poses.

After Ami, Kira spoke to us about the character designs of each of the princesses and how they would interact with each other in this scene. They started with research. Research is a huge part of any Disney movie undertaking. The animation team went to Disneyland to meet with each of the princesses to ask them all sorts of questions to figure more out about them. However, the biggest thing for Kira was getting all of the original princesses voices back for this scene. She explained how she totally fangirled about that moment. She explained that in interviewing each of the women who have voiced the characters, some for much of their lives, she learned how they bring so much of themselves to the characters.

So many of the women came to the animation department so they could ask in depth questions about how each princess would react to specific situations. They did this to figure out exactly what sort of reactions they would have. In addition to the princesses they also had Mark Henn on hand to help because he was the original supervising animator on five of the Disney Princess movies. He was inspired himself to become an animator after seeing Cinderella. Mark was there to help the team be as authentic to the characters in every scene.

When it came to animating the scene they wanted to pay homage to the original films and incorporate that into the scene. They needed to make sure that each princess was distinctly themselves but also familiar with each other and had friendships. How would they all interact. Some moments were subtle and some not so subtle. Every moment that they were on screen was to be iconic to who they were even if they weren’t speaking in a scene but rather somewhere in the background. You’ll have to watch this scene multiples times to catch them all.

It was an amazing session and one of the coolest parts of the movie that so many people are going to love. I’m glad that I only have to wait one more day!!

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RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET arrives in theatres everywhere on November 21st!