Meeting Mermaids | Concept Art Process

Kay Nielsen’s concept art for ‘The Little Mermaid’ feature Walt Disney had in mind but cancelled in the 1940s was found in the archives in the 1980s by the team working on an animated feature based on the Hans Christian Andersen tale who realized the story had at one point been in Disney’s radar. The art itself by Nielsen is dramatic and somber, with many of the imagery depicted exactly as Andersen described it and his striking interpretation of the storm ended up being used in the 1989 animated