Tony DeRosa and the Essence of a Real Leading Lady

On my personal Facebook I follow a Disney Animators page and, every so often, on that page they have a Featured Artist instalment where they talk briefly about their career in animation and also have a quick snippet interview.
I really wanted to share the latest one, which was on Tony DeRosa.

Tony has worked on so many movies that we all know and love
(Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and the Little Mermaid, if I could be so coy as to name drop here) 
and whilst the likes of Glen Keane and Andreas Deja, who also worked on these pieces, went on to become household names (albeit in houses with aspiring animators or general Disney fanatics), Tony's name is one you hear far less often.

It's undeniable that the guy has done a lot of great work and been involved in a lot of great movies, but what, and who, I wanted to talk about more specifically today was Nakoma.

I feel that Nakoma has GOT to be one of the most underrated characters to ever be produced by a Disney movie.
Whilst I loved the premise of the Pocahontas story, and absolutely loved the amazing score, I found the two protagonists of the movie to be completely lack lustre and entirely unengaging.
In fact, for the majority of the movie John Smith and Pocahontas seem to be pulling pained faces at each other whilst running round the woods - Not entirely unlike a certain sparkly vampire movie's two wooden leads with limited facial expressions.
      ...psst. I meant Edward and Bella from Twilight, just encase you missed the dig!
       Which is odd, because I actually liked the books and films - damn peer pressure, mucking with acceptable ships! 

As a leading lady I found Pocahontas herself to be entirely lacking. 
Now Nakoma on the other hand, well, that girl is an entirely different story!
She's dynamic, engaging and appealing. She's got the sort of self assured confidence that every woman wants and every girl should aspire to have and, of course, let us not forget the damn sass that just oozes out of that woman. Nakoma has a wide and well executed range of believable emotions, something I don't think that you could ever accuse Pocahontas of and, for that, I think that she outshines the lead and steals the show and, vicariously through her, so does Tony DeRosa

And just before I go, here's a little bit of love for a real leading lady.