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mickEblu

Well-Known Member
Constance was introduced in 2006 I believe, at least at Disneyland. I think WDW got theirs roughly around that same time, maybe within the same year. I can see why you'd mention Aunt Hilda though lol. To her credit, the actual face actress for Constance is much more normal looking and attractive and nowhere near as unflattering as that effect conveys, the various portraits around the room are als more representative of what she looks like-

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The entire figure of Constance has always looked awful though. For a number of reasons, not just because it used a flat facial surface instead of the sculpted ones of Leota and the busts. The lighting itself was very unflattering too. As was the physical veil they used to surround the head, which resembled a barton bandage... The shape, lighting and everything really just didn't work. Like I said, I prefer the bride not have a visible face at all, but the other much face projected characters in the ride are evidence that the Constance effect could have been done so much better as well.


For lack of a better phrase, she's based off a somewhat stylized drawing of a woman with features that would be exceptionally rare if not unheard of in real life. I believe you and others asked what the deal is with her oddly proportioned neck, cheekbones etc, and this is the answer. It's the same reason why Maleficent has a super long face, pointed nose and chin and unnaturally high and sharp cheekbones. Features that they attempted to replicate in the live action form by using copious amounts of prosthetics and makeup.

Constance, Leota and the busts resemble real people because they are video recordings of real people. The rest of the characters in the ride including this new bride were fabricated based off of artistic drawings. There is a huge visual difference between the two styles. This bride is a departure from the projected real actor style and is instead much more similar to a Marc Davis character.

I feel like this is your opinion and it’s wrong. If that’s what the imagineers were going for they failed.
 

MerlinTheGoat

Well-Known Member
I feel like this is your opinion and it’s wrong. If that’s what the imagineers were going for they failed.
Whether it looks good is an opinion. Most of the rest of what I said is not. You and a few others are commenting on why her neck is so long and slender, and why her cheeks are so narrow and sharp among other things. I gave you the reason. You are 100% free and valid in not liking the execution and design, but the intent was evident.

The bride resembles a mixture of a handful of different Marc Davis female designs, and i've pointed out a couple of them. More specifically, she sort of looks like a fusion of one of his "beautiful" female type designs but with hints of Maleficent's more lanky and sharp features. Which I think worked out fairly well since it made her look a bit otherworldly and stoic/statuesque in the process.

My remaining issue is that she isn't scary. But taken on her own, I think she looks visually good and blends well with the Marc Davis type designs of most of the other characters. They probably should have gone a step further and changed the character designs in the wedding portraits to fit her new look and style. She doesn't remotely resemble Constance and leaving them along clashes.

Overall, I just basically think she looks VASTLY superior to Constance. Like I cannot put it into words how terrible I thought that variant of the bride was.
 
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Phroobar

Well-Known Member
Kind of looks like her.

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mickEblu

Well-Known Member
Whether it looks good is an opinion. Most of the rest of what I said is not. You and a few others are commenting on why her neck is so long and slender, and why her cheeks are so narrow and sharp among other things. I gave you the reason. You are 100% free and valid in not liking the execution and design, but the intent was evident.

The bride resembles a mixture of a handful of different Marc Davis female designs, and i've pointed out a couple of them. More specifically, she sort of looks like a fusion of one of his "beautiful" female type designs but with hints of Maleficent's more lanky and sharp features. Which I think worked out fairly well since it made her look a bit otherworldly and stoic/statuesque in the process.

My remaining issue is that she isn't scary. But taken on her own, I think she looks visually good and blends well with the Marc Davis type designs of most of the other characters. They probably should have gone a step further and changed the character designs in the wedding portraits to fit her new look and style. She doesn't remotely resemble Constance and leaving them along clashes.

Overall, I just basically think she looks VASTLY superior to Constance. Like I cannot put it into words how terrible I thought that variant of the bride was.

I disagree strongly that the intent is evident.

Yeah Constance sucked and this is a small improvement visually - as in it doesn’t look like her face is being projected onto a pillow. Haven’t got a good feel for the effect on the videos I’ve seen. Agree she isn’t scary and just overall her design leaves a lot to be desired. I was expecting the new bride to be a home run. This is more like a base hit. Something like the 70s to 95 figure would have been a million times better.
 
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MerlinTheGoat

Well-Known Member
When I heard some vague descriptions of what they were doing with the bride, I thought they were just going to keep Constance and her face, but maybe improve the facial surface and make her float. I didn't realize they were outright creating a whole new design. So it caught me by surprise, in a positive way.

Unfortunately I think the chances of ever getting a "scary" bride again are zero. It's funny too because going back to the faceless glowing eyed bride that existed there for decades would have also accomplished their obsession with purging violence from the ride since she wasn't actually threatening anyone with violence (just with her disturbing "face", or lack thereof). But it's also something that they probably think would traumatize children or something like that.
 

Castle Cake Apologist

Well-Known Member
To the comments about the bride's face and neck having "unnaturally" long and thin proportions. This is the intended design, she is no longer a replication of a true to life human anymore. Constance was already one of the very small handful of characters that used a video recording of a real live actor's face, same as Leota and the singing busts. However, the remainder and vast majority of the characters in the ride were designed by Marc Davis and had his traditionally stylized and hyper exaggerated facial features that were not supposed to look like real people.

This new bride is definitely no longer trying to look "real", it has very similar features to many of Marc Davis' female characters. I can think of several of his designs off the top of my head that have similarly thin lanky features to this bride in fact. In particular, a bit of Anita from 101 Dalmations and even Maleficent's extremely thin face and neck and her high cheek bones.

If you're not into this style, that's fine. But I do get the sense that some of you outright just didn't even catch the fact that the bride was deliberately redesigned not to look like a real human anymore. I don't usually call people out like this. But I do think some of yall are getting a bit ridiculous with at least some of your criticisms (not all of course as it isn't my personal favorite bride either). And i'm sorry but you may actually be a bit crazy if you think this looks better by comparison, because woof-

View attachment 838814

This comes across as unnecessarily condescending. Most of us are well-acquainted with Davis' work—some of us, myself included, to an almost obsessive degree. This does not resemble a Davis character, particularly not an animatronic one. The new bride feels jarring to me largely because it looks so different from Davis' style, especially when compared to his creations encountered just feet away from this effect.

Davis was an absolutely genius artist in comical exaggeration and drawing figures and scenes that were instantly readable, and this is not that. I’d guess the face merely looks the way it does due to the challenge of aligning a Pepper's Ghost projection with a physical figure, all while accommodating multiple viewing angles from a moving ride vehicle.

You’re also ignoring the fact that we have art for this scene, and the bride doesn’t have an unnaturally elongated neck or head in the artwork, nor does the art really resemble anything even remotely close to Davis’ work for the parks.

I’ll agree that it’s a significant improvement over 2006 Constance, but let’s be honest... the Constance bar was embarrassingly low, especially at Disneyland.
 
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Parteecia

Well-Known Member
I liked the bride. Her proportions did not stand out to me. The portraits with the other bride face and the disappearing husbands did not make sense.

I had more of a problem with the poor horse pitching forward.
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And I wondered about the tiny crop circles in the lawn.
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mickEblu

Well-Known Member
I liked the bride. Her proportions did not stand out to me. The portraits with the other bride face and the disappearing husbands did not make sense.

I had more of a problem with the poor horse pitching forward.
View attachment 839207
And I wondered about the tiny crop circles in the lawn.
View attachment 839209

Easy. The horse got free and ran around all over the lawn. Mystery solved.
 

VicariousCorpse

Well-Known Member
This is the intended design, she is no longer a replication of a true to life human anymore. Constance was already one of the very small handful of characters that used a video recording of a real live actor's face, same as Leota and the singing busts. However, the remainder and vast majority of the characters in the ride were designed by Marc Davis and had his traditionally stylized and hyper exaggerated facial features that were not supposed to look like real people.
The final versions are exaggerated but were definitely supposed to look like real people. Marv Davis may have done his concept art in hyper exaggeration, but the modeler, Blaine Gibson, who translated his work into 3d absolutely based his work on real life people. Here's a quote from him:

"I’m not faulting Marc at all, he’s one of the greatest. But he did have this ability to draw a cartoon that would be funny and maybe have a mouth which, when fully analyzed, would be six inches across. And it can’t work in three dimensions and be compatible. So I had to base my character from the inside out. They were based on real people and so that is what I insisted on."

That said, in my opinion, the new bride doesn't look stylistically at all like the work of Marc Davis nor Blaine Gibson. I believe the long neck is just a byproduct of the way she was made and the style of projection, I don't think it was intentional to make her have a giraffe neck.
 

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