 Very few of the animators at the Disney studio had had artistic training (most had been newspaper cartoonists); among these few was Grim Natwick, who had trained in Europe. The animator's success in designing and animating Betty Boop for Fleischer Studios showed an understanding of human female anatomy, and when Walt Disney hired Natwick he was given female characters to animate almost exclusively. Attempts to animate Persephone, the female lead of The Goddess of Spring, had proved largely unsuccessful; Natwick's animation of the heroine in Cookie Carnival showed greater promise, and the animator was eventually given the task of animating Snow White herself. Though live action footage of Snow White, the Prince and the Queen was shot as reference for the animators, the artists animators disapproved of rotoscoping, considering it to hinder the production of effective caricature. None of Babbit's animation of the Queen was rotoscoped; despite Graham and Natwick's objections, however, some scenes of Snow White and the Prince were directly traced from the live-action footage.
