That was a hard decision. Like, Snow White has a lot of animation issues, but that is forgivable because it was the first of its kind, and the effect of the multi plane camera is gorgeous. There is no question that Cinderella, Sleeping beauty, The little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, PotF and Tangled feature some of the best animation work Disney ever did, so they were out. Which left Aladdin, Pocahontas, Mulan and Brave. But Pocahontas as some of the most gorgeous background animation Disney ever did, I mostly have just issue with the character design. And there is nothing truly wrong with Mulan's animation, it is just not quite as impressive as the top notch movies. It certainly shines in the character designs though.

Which left Aladdin and Brave...with Aladdin, I just don't like the cartoony style, but Disney knew what it was going for and delivered on it. Brave...to be perfectly clear here, the landscapes is Brave are gorgeous. But everything else is kind of ugly to look at. All the brown tones used make the movie really, really dark and often a little bit muddy, and I frankly hate the character designs. So in the end the landscapes couldn't rescue Brave.

Agree with you :) and i dont like too the character design in brave

It’s good, but not great.

I'm so conflicted with Mulan's animation. Sometimes I think it looks beautiful (the 'Reflection' scene for example) but other times it can look.. plain? especially next to the others. I feel the exact same way about Aladdin, but I prefer Aladdin's character designs.

I think the Scottish highlands and backgrounds in Brave look stunning and I'm totally enamored by them, so that's enough for me not to pick it.

I don't find the animation for this movie to be beautiful. I find Mulan's to be far superior in every way.

I think some are choosing brave because they dont like the film itself or the princess, but I find it stunning, with great sceneries and animation (The whole Touch the sky scene)

@Mongoose09 The animation of Mulan is inspired by Chinese Art which is pretty much about the empty space. Mulan does a beautiful job of translating this aspect into animation, especially for the scenes in the mountains, it just isn't quite as ground-breaking as most of the other ones.

@gitanita Well, I am still working on my Disney Princess Tarot and I spend ages in the last weeks going through screencaps of the various movies, especially Brave. Outside of the landscape scenes (which are indeed stunning) it is really hard to even see what is going on in most pictures because of all the brown and dark tones. It is really only when the movie shows off the highland when it shines.

Not that I am against a more muted colour Palette, but a little bit more contrast would be nice.

Too much bright colors and the style design is off with me. I liked the design of the other old ones like Snow White and Cinderella much more.

^I'm afraid you refer to a wrong movie. Sleeping Beauty's animation isn't that bright, especially all scenes including Maleficent.

Idk why people love animation from this movie. I understand that it's their first full-length animation movie ever and they did the hard job to complete this, but it still looks dull and lack of colors. Some of animation looks incomplete for me, like Snow's hair for example.

Brave has the most realistic and detailed animation (duh, of course it's PIXAR!) especially with landscapes (it's breathtaking). But yeah, their character design isn't the best though (in general most of Pixar character design are too cartoony). And it's not a secret if peoples here tend to dislike CGI,so yeah.

Mulan's, although it seems plain in some scenes but as Swanpride said the animation was inspired from Chinese arts which most of them were simple-looking. Although yeah compared to the rest it's not appealing much, but at least it's accurate and respectful towards the origin culture.

@ Sparklefairy375 Pixar's landscape animation is impressive, but I always have a problem when they put cartoony looking characters into those hyper-realistic settings. It just clashes too much...The Good Dinosaur is especially extreme in this regard, but Brave is a close second. Disney somehow manages to create a way better balance, which is why I listed Tangled as one of the movies with the most impressive animation (because it is, it is incredible detailed, but still balanced).

I cut Snow White some slack, I admit, but you have to admit that for example the transformation scene for the Evil Queen is impressive to this day.

^I see. And cartoony-looking characters combined with hyper realistic landscapes seems like the main problem of today's CGI animation.

About Snow White I mostly focused with color palletes and lighting used to the animation. I have to agree that some scene, like Evil Queen's transformation, is classic and timeless.

That and a lack of variety overall. I have to give it to Brave, at least they try something different with the character designs, but different isn't always good.

Brave is ugly, for the most part. But then, it's good for a Pixar movie...

Not sophisticated at all.