The reason the bear looks the way it looks

                                                 Artical by, MightyBalto1925. October 14th, 2009



While browsing Google at school, I came across this interesting article about the bear.



You know the bear as and evil looking bear, but there are reasons for why the bear looks this way for the following reasons:



An outlined bear with one color would look too cartoony, but adding detailed fur is too expensive.  If it were to realistic, it would flicker.

The solution (what is seen in the movie.) is to simply use highlights.



As for why the eyes are just yellow, there was no explanation. That remains to still be a mystery. But in my opinion, it might have something to do with details. They most likely didn’t want to take the time (for money reasons) to add pupils to the bear, as it hardly had a role in the movie.



Here is some concept aswell.

Source of information: Link

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Last comments

M1 Garand Man 3000	January 12, 2010

Well, take a look at the other two films that Amblimation did before working on Balto. An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (their first film) was overran by the success of Beauty and The Beast and not to mention, both films have been released at the same time which is November 11, 1991. Their second film, "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story" which was released in November 24, 1993 was like a kid's Jurassic Park but unlike Steven Spielberg's masterpiece(which obviously was Jurassic Park), the film itself didn't really catch the attention of the general public. So, to make a long story short, the reason why Balto could have had a low budget in making details for the grizzly bear is that Amblimation was limited to a certain amount of money due to their last not so successful attempts.

Beachpup	December 05, 2009

i really like your article it makes sence

Flurrin	December 05, 2009

Giving a creature eyes without pupils or irises makes them look non-sentient, evil, or blind. Naturally they wanted watchers to know right off the bat that this bear was a wild animal and not a character. As to why the eyes are yellow, well, Balto's eye-whites are yellow, as are all the wolves' in the film, so they probably wanted to keep that theme for the wilder animals. Excellent article.

Akida(Ph antom-wo lf)	November 15, 2009
	Just wants to have fun in life

i like it^^

Keilidh	November 05, 2009
	Midnight Dogz

adding two dots as pupils doesn't cost much time or money. xD It just makes the character more intimidating.

Ginga Densetsu Aleu	October 19, 2009
	Im the clown that nobody likes

I think it was because the animators from Japan got the movie confused with a TV show that was popular in Japan at the time: Ginga Nagareboshi Gin.

Steet	October 18, 2009
	Webmaster
	BS leader

Very good find Be sure to check the "source" as there are storyboards I had never seen. And yes, they didn't include pupils to make it more frightening, which is something they do a lot in recent years (take the 2003 Ninja turtles series, for example)

Riley	October 18, 2009

Good research. And I believe that the reason they didn't add pupils to the bear is because without them, it gives the bear a more "evil" look to it.