Despite rumors that Disney Junior’s Ariel was inspired by R&B singer Halle Baily’s live-action reimagining, the truth is, according to series executive producer Lynne Southerland, neither project had anything to do with the other. It was a simple case of two groups of great minds thinking alike.
“We were already in development and production when the live-action film came out,” shares Southerland, known not only for producing kids’ series like Enchantimals: Tales from Everwilde and Monsters High: Adventures of the Ghoul Squad but also co-directing Mulan 2 and becoming the first African-American female director of an animated feature. “Both projects were on their own paths. But Disney was looking to do something new with Ariel and it’s been wonderfully inspiring and fun to make Ariel part of our world, no pun intended.”
The animated musical series, inspired by Disney’s 1989 Academy Award-winning The Little Mermaid, follows young mermaid princess Ariel as she embarks on adventures with her friends throughout their Caribbean-inspired fairytale kingdom of Atlantica. Geared towards preschoolers and their families, each episode highlights themes of community, curiosity and resourcefulness, and celebrates the multi-cultural elements of the Caribbean through music, food, fashion, language and folklore.
Check out the trailer:
Releasing Thursday, June 27 on Disney Junior, with episodes also on Disney Junior’s YouTube channel, Ariel boasts a stellar cast that includes Mykal-Michelle Harris as Ariel, Taye Diggs as King Triton, and Amber Riley as Ursula, or “Tantie Ursula,” as she’s referred to by Ariel.
“Tantie” or “Tanty” is a Trinidad term for Aunt, or a word used by children and young adults as a salutation of respect to a mature woman. Ariel also has a “Tantie Chantale,” voiced by Danni Washington, who has a Bachelor of Science degree in Marine Science/Biology and is the first African-American/woman of color to host her own nationally-syndicated science show, Xploration Nature Knows Best, which is seen in nearly 95 million homes in the US on FOX.
“Danny actually calls herself a ‘mocha mermaid,’” shares Southerland. “How magnificent is that?”
And it’s one of the many small details included in the show to make the characters as authentic as possible to the culture and world they are spotlighting.
“Every member of the team was invested in making sure this could be the best possible show it could be,” says art director Chrystin Garland. “We've gone back to the drawing board a few times when things weren't right. And I feel so grateful that we have a leader like Lynne and understanding people over at Disney Junior Creative who would be like, ‘Hey, it’s not right and we’re going to adjust the schedule so that we can get it to a place where everybody's happy and everyone feels that this reflects the joy and the wealth of culture that both the Caribbean and an under-the-sea fantasy offers.’”
Sutherland adds, “It was challenging setting up the world. For the big sets that tell us we're in Atlantica, we had to play around with and discover. Once we knew the visual language that we had settled on, then we really got rolling. I don't want to say it was easy. Being on a TV schedule is challenging in and of itself. But I think there was a good amount of mind melding on our production that worked to our benefit.”
The crew’s cultural consultant, Dr. Patricia Saunders, professor of English and hemispheric Caribbean studies and director of graduate studies at the University of Miami, also helped with that process.
“It was important for us to have something on every level that celebrated the Caribbean,” says Garland. “But the Caribbean is made up of so many different nations.”
13 nations, to be exact. They include Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, as well as Trinidad and Tobago.
“There's so much to pull from and Patricia helped educate us,” continues Garland. “For example, one of the foods that we included in the series were Doubles and, initially, the way we had them animated wasn’t an accurate reflection of how they were supposed to be eaten. We’d made them way too flat.”
Doubles are a common street food originating in Trinidad and Tobago consisting of curried chickpeas served on two fried flatbreads. Doubles as a dish was created in Princes Town by Emamool "Mamoodeen" Deen and his wife Raheman Rasulan Deen in 1936. Deen used to sell curried chickpeas over fried flatbread with chutneys. When his customers began requesting to “double” the snack, or “bara,” in their orders, the name “doubles” was coined.
You can see Ariel and her friends eating the Doubles in this clip from Disney Junior:
“We also included Bake and Shark food, which is another street food in Trinidad and Tobago,” says Garland. “It’s a combination of fried bread and fried shark meat.”
When it came down to architecture, Garland notes that the team learned they needed a centralized marketplace for everyone in Atlantica to reflect the food and shopping hubs found everywhere in the Caribbean. The Atlantica Palace is also inspired by the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Trinidad and Tobago.
The Performing Arts center’s own architecture was inspired by the Chaconia (Warszewiczia coccinea), which is the national flower of Trinidad and Tobago.
“The flowers are so beautiful, so we were excited to make an undersea version of that,” explains Garland. “There are Easter eggs like that everywhere. And, for the music, we included Calypso, Chutney, and Soca, with the classic steel drums.”
A challenge, aside from picking and choosing what all to include from the wealth of Caribbean culture, was making sure that the focus was still on the ocean and adapting certain foods and fashions for undersea life.
“So even though they eat pancakes, they eat kelp pancakes,” shares Southerland. “We wanted to include all the flavors of the Caribbean, but we could never forget where these mermaids live.”
This was especially true when it came to the mermaids’ hair, which is full of beautiful jewelry and island braids, but still had to be able to move freely and reflect the hair of someone who spends 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in the water.
“I attribute a lot of that work to the people at ICON Creative Studio who collaborated well with us on making sure that we got the hair right, especially with Ariel's red locks,” says Garland. “We did a full deep dive, no pun intended, on how the locks come out of her head, how it was parted, and making sure the baby hairs looked natural. And then, dealing with our other characters who have a variety of different hair textures, we created a whole sheet chart 1A through 4C, which is very prevalent in the Black hair and curly hair community.”
Though most of the show’s designs were done in Photoshop and Blender, ICON mainly used Maya and Zbrush to sculpt a base mesh and add details for texturing. Though Ariel’s hair is certainly a showstopper, her sisters’ curls also share a wooly texture that’s so delightful to look at with all the shells and pearls mixed in with the curls. It’s also fun to watch as it bounces with the sea’s tides.
“Ariel and her twin sisters offered a great opportunity to celebrate Black hair,” notes Southerland. “CG has made amazing leaps. If this show was made 10 years ago, we might not have been able to achieve what we're able to now. Hats off to the people who keep developing the programs that we use.”
Check out Ariel and her sisters’ hair in this Disney Junior clip from the “Atlantica Day” episode:
When it came to tail design, the crew had a similar celebratory mindset, but this time, centered around not only real Caribbean fish, but also Carnaval culture.
“Carnaval has so many great costumes and really bold shape language,” shares Garland. “We wanted to reflect that in all our designs, whether it be the fins of a merperson or a specific fish or even the seaweed in Atlantica. We wanted it all to be bright and bold.”
Altantica’s entire city looks like it has been glossed in rainbow, like Mother of Pearl, with the royal palace at the center of a large neighborhood of smaller houses that completely encapsulate a massive hillside or mound. The smaller houses are reminiscent of the homes found on the hillsides of Southern California, but Garland and Southerland also used a Latin American reference for the layout of the city.
“We wanted the palace to be integrated with the neighborhood and used the Port of Spain for inspiration,” says Garland. “And we were looking at coral reefs and how those are formed and merge together.”
The city was also modeled after “Breeze Blocks,” also known as cinder blocks, which are low density, aerated concrete boxes designed for non-load bearing applications in homes and building construction. They’ve also been used for reef and sea habitat restoration in Grenada and other parts of the Caribbean, with Grenada’s capital, St. Georges, seeing successes with this method as early as 2016 when they used towers of these blocks of concrete to save marine life and create new reefs.
“I get an email pretty regularly called ‘Nice News,’ which is a daily digest of positive news stories,” she explains. “One day, just coincidentally, these Breeze Blocks were on one of their news stories and we decided to use it in the show. You often just happen upon things. And then we all share them with each other as a way to keep expanding the world. I’ve also gotten emails from Nice News about unusual sea creatures, and we’ve tried to put them in episodes. We’re just playing and having so much fun.”
Playing in the saltwater sandbox is what has made a potentially daunting show an absolute joy for Garland and Southerland. It makes the challenges invigorating, rather than deflating.
“We’re designing an undersea fantasy world,” says Garland. “You can’t be mad at that. Whether it's sparking your artistic imagination, your thirst for knowledge when it comes to things outside your own scope, or making you want to become a Marine Biologist one day, I hope Ariel encourages kids to get out there, try new things and just explore.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
