It's funny that we are discussing this, I just listened to an interview with James Baxter and he said that Beauty and the Beast was his first supervising animator position and that he was 23 at the time and probably not old enough or experienced enough to have that position. He said that if there was one movie that he'd like to go back and redo, it's Beauty and the Beast. He got really sick (mono) during the making of it and took two months off which is where other animators had to step in which I thought was interesting and partially explains the character design issues. Plus he talked about not having experience managing other animators and telling them how she was going to look (which is another reason for the alterations).
Fun stuff...if anyone is interested (take note that they are 1 hour interviews) and are heavy in animation jargon, but animationpodcast.com is a great site and Clay (who is a Disney animator) interviews tons of Disney animators for his podcasts. They are very informational for anyone looking to get into animation and might be interesting for non-animators as they do talk about the creation of some of the films, but keep in mind that a lot of animators tend to go where the work is..so for example Baxter also talks about his work with Dreamworks.
Other podcasts include Andreas Deja (Scar, King Tritan, Lilo), Glen Keane (though this one has yet to be completed), James Baxter, Ron Clements and John Musker. Great interviews and sometimes totally different views of the films that they have worked on.
