So a year ago, a grand portion of my ‘Disney Animals as Humans’ series from 2012 – 2014 was featured across a handful of media outlets to be met by varying degrees of praise and criticism. Over the course of that strange 2-week run, I’ve accumulated so many wonderful followers – from all different walks of life, no less – who had come to let me know what the diversity implemented in those drawings meant to them personally.
My goal with this series was, and still is, to abolish this myth that you need to destroy a character design’s integrity in order to diversify and expand your horizons. That a character can still retain their personality and spirit regardless of what race or ethnic background you assign to them. That “humanizing” any anthropomorphic character as anything but white is somehow inaccurate or takes away from source material as though there were anything set in stone on the blank slates of a story set in contemporary NY or under the sea.
So with that out of the way – let me clarify what I’ve done here:
- Dodger is brown. He’s probably Desi or Latino – I didn’t have anything in mind, just that I doubt Rita and Tito should be the only “minorities” just because they’re brown-coded characters. This is NY. C’mon.
- Sebastian is Caribbean and this is entirely canon.
- Chicano Lady and Tramp. I thought it suited the narrative well enough.
- This one is self-explanatory.
There is more to come! I’ll be finishing up some more characters as the year goes on and what not, but here are the first of many. :)
Thanks a bunch for all your support!