Based on a 2,000-year-old Chinese tale, Mulan used a strong visual style based on traditional Chinese art to tell the story of a high-spirited girl who aspires to be the perfect daughter but always ends up feeling as if she’s a disappointment. When her elderly father is forced to join the army, she disguises herself as a young man named Ping to take his place — her only “help” coming in the form of a guardian dragon impeccably voiced by Eddie Murphy. Mulan was the first Disney animated feature produced primarily at the Disney Feature Animation studio at Walt Disney World, and the production team created several pioneering software tools to create the film’s dazzling crowd and background scenes, including Faux Plane, which increased the sense of depth in the backgrounds shown during the scenes in the Forbidden City and in front of the Great Wall. Even Pixar Animation Studios’ RenderMan software was used to add a photorealistic look to several crowd scenes.
