Lately I've been walking around the city and noticing all of the Halloween costume shops that keep popping up. Given that Halloween is right around the corner I felt like going into one to shop around. While every costume was either "trashy" or humorous noticed a pattern. When I was little I was the Ariel from "The Little Mermaid", Jasmine from "Aladin", and Cinderella. Shopping for a Disney character costume is rather hard these days if you want the entire outfit. This reminded me of a the illustrator Jeff Scott Campbell and his interpretation of Disney characters.
Mr. Campbell is a very notable person. Working everywhere from Wildstorm Comics to Marvel Comics. He cr
eated "Danger Girl" and did the illustrations for the comic "Gen13". But that's just scratching the surface of his achievements.
I'd imagine that Walt Disney would love to have seen his precious princesses like this in a new light. They all have a very strong sex appeal to them. Disney does this whole "princess" theme with all of the princesses and it's all in a very innocent settin
g, which is how it should be, but all of these seem very adult like and I do like all of the details that he puts into the pictures. He not only does each girl, but does a very scenic background too. The Beauty and the Beast picture shows this by not only putting Bella in the middle of the portrait for the center focal point but also her surroundings. We have the big beast behind her, a dark palace is shown in the background and he's holding her red robe with that pink rose too. Obviously the facial structure looks nothing like Bella's face. It's more seductive and has a very serious/mean look to it. "Not-so-Disney" Bella is has a very pin-up girl look to her that just radiates sex.
I could see these girls drawn as pin-ups for something, be it a tattoo. But that is what these pictures remind me of when I look at them. Mr. Campbell actually is very active with the internet too. He has a facebook, a twitter, a blooger, his own website, and more and does a lot of social networking with his work it seems like. He does a calendar of these drawings he does and gives it the name "Fairytale Fantasies".
Pretty amazing artwork here. He obviously takes a lot of time on these mastering the forms, colours and details, which is always appreciated. I've seen similar art before, but never knew a name so thanks for posting this....how old is alice..?
ReplyDeleteThe most interesting thing about these is that the artist consciously chose designs associated with the Disney versions of these fairy tales. The Little Mermaid was first published in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen, Beauty and the Beast was first published in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villenueve, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was published by Lewis Carroll in 1865. There have been numerous visual representations of these characters, but the artist chose to modify the Disney versions.
ReplyDeletePerhaps its fitting that J. Scott Campbell did these, seeing as how the original versions of most of the stories were pretty degrading to women, just as well as Disney disregarded the morals to the stories. I think his influences include Gil Elvgren and Alberto Vargas, but Campbell elongates and narrows the figures a lot more than they did. If I had to take a stab at the intended audience, I would have to guess teenage males.