I was doing some internet searching and came accross a very interesting little tidbit. I guess an artist, Phil Barnhart, who worked on animation for promotion and advertising for The Little Mermaid has been assigned by Disney to come up with cover art for a quote "2006 release"! This is further proof and hope for us TLM fans that it will be the October release

. It's still more than a year away but every day is a bit closer and we have Cinderella and Lady and the Tramp to keep us occupied haha. Anyway, here's his site, it's very interesting. He did A LOT of work on animated features:
http://www.superstaff.com/Philo/PhiloRes.html
Here's a small glipse of the Little mermaid art that he has done (looks like it was for books and what not). I really like the style that has a lot of character but still lets it look animated, I don't think he'll let us down

:

here's his film credit for TLM "Started as a Character Designer on The Little Mermaid and continued as a Character Key Assistant Animator throughout the film's production. Participated in the development of the characters Ursula, Sebastian and Ariel." I'll let you guys look at the rest. I got a little excited and felt the need to spoil

lol.