You never quite know what’s going to sit easily, and what’s going to be the challenge.

I must have done a hundred different drawings of Sullivan, trying to get his colours or his patterns right. It wasn’t easy, but it didn’t turn out to be one of the more difficult things. She has that one piece of hair that Elinor tucks in and she pulls back out – that piece of hair is part of her personality, so the animators didn’t let that get lost in the rest of her hair. When we know that something’s going to be a challenge, those processes tend to go pretty smoothly. We knew from the beginning that Merida’s hair was going to be one of our technical challenges. So, we hope that the viewer is able to let go and fall into the world. Then we have some other little inaccuracies, like some people turning into bears. Hopefully, we didn’t distract from the natural beauty by adding this. The tartan, with the plaid that we have, didn’t exist in the 10 th or 11 th century, and we chose to put that in because that is such an iconic identifier for Scotland. I do love Scotland, so I will tell you straight out, we do have historical inaccuracies. It was a really bad stereotype, but all I had was “green”, so to find that it was so many colours of green, and so thick, caught me off guard the most.

I grew up in California, and if you don’t know California, it’s like you know nothing about the world outside of the state. I knew that it was going to be green, but I thought it would be golf-course green.

Then we drove up to Dunottar, to see that great castle on the North Sea, and across the Highlands. We came here, going up and down the Royal Mile – that’s where I gathered all the reference for tartans, and also the reference for all the stonework on the castles.

Ginger brave april fools