#phantieart

My family's amazing, and I'm in my family!

Preview of next picture in the Year of Madrigals!

The comet was diving headlong to earth. It was exactly forty-two minutes and four seconds past eight. <...>

The comet roared with its flaming tail right through the valley, across the forest and the mountains, and then disappeared again over the edge of the world.

If it had come a tiny bit nearer to the earth I am quite sure that none of us would be here now. But it just gave a whisk of its tail and swept off to another solar system far away, and it has never been seen since.

~~~

In commemoration of 80 years since first publication of Tove Jansson’s “Comet in Moominland” (“Kometjakten” in Swedish) novel, this piece of fanart is based on 1978 Soviet/Russian stop-motion three-part adaptation directed by Aida Zyablikova and Nina Shorina, with characters reimagined by Irina Vorobyova and Lyudmila Tanasenko (generally female filming crew!), filmed at Soyuztelefilm studio.

Small fanart for Antonio’s birthday.

It is a sort of a remake of older picture (one you can see as a header for this page in regular Tumblr interface).

Sketch before the clean-up - under 'read more'.

“It was the winter of war, in 1939. One’s work stood still; it felt completely pointless to try to create pictures.

Perhaps it was understandable that I suddenly felt an urge to write down something that was to begin with “Once upon a time.”

What followed had to be a fairytale – that was inevitable – but I excused myself with avoiding princes, princesses and small children and chose instead my angry signature character from the cartoons, and called him the Moomintroll.

The half-written story was forgotten until 1945. Then a friend pointed out that it could become a children’s book; just finish it and illustrate it; maybe they will want it.

Anyhow, here was my very first happy ending!” - Tove Jansson

~~~

It must have been late in the afternoon one day at the end of August when Moomintroll and his mother arrived at the deepest part of the great forest. It was completely quiet, and so dim between the trees that it was as though twilight had already fallen.

They were out searching for a snug, warm place where they could build a house to crawl into when winter came. Moomins cannot stand the cold at all, so the house would have to be ready by October at the latest.

80 years ago, in 1945, during the last months of World War II, was published the first book about the family of Moomins by Tove Jansson – “The Moomins and the Great Flood” (Swedish: “Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen”, literally “The Little Trolls and the Great Flood”).

Alma Madrigal – in my opinion, one of the most underrated (and undervalued) Disney heroines, and it’s her who is a main character of the story, to me.

In less than year of her life, this young woman has met the love of her life, married him, had children, and lost him to violent death (while seeking refuge and being exhausted from childbirth of three), and after that, for 50 years she lived with a trauma of witnessing her husband killed before her eyes, while raising triplets, governing entire growing village, and dealing with unpredictable mysterious magic. (And, while she, probably, was helped by whole community in the course of it, she, despite being very young and remaining such for years, never remarried again, staying fairly independent.)

The magic that was given in a cost of loved one’s life, and one that serves as a mean to assure that nobody, Alma herself of her children, never have to revive experience of seeing one of them giving away their all to save other. And one way to honor and maintain that miracle is to teach each new generation to respect its origin, use its gifts only for good and not to mistreat it, so no sacrifices will be needed to keep family together. And, by tragic irony, it turned that her children and grandchildren are willing to do exact thing they were supposed to be prevented from, for the sake of keeping miracle alive, rather than taking care of communication and open support of each other to be strong together. And even then, for years all of them never tried to abuse their, potentially dangerous for the most part, magical gifts, remained kind-hearted and loving to each other, even if not all of them mastered ability of expressing their love in constructive ways. This is, I think, a testimony of Alma being a fairly good mother and mentor figure in highly irregular situation she was put in without any clue how to handle.

Celebratory fanart for 15th anniversary of “Tangled” and 4th year since the release of “Encanto”, two movies sharing one director, Byron Howard.

Someone once said Bruno would make good fairy godparent figure, which sounds just fair (he embodies archetype anyway, and in early versions of it in folk tales, role of magical mentor is sometimes occupied by an uncle or aunt of hero). Then, get a magical godchild assigned, old man!

“Tangled” may be my favorite (second of TP&TF) Disney fairytale of modern era, it does pay respect to its classic form, but also has its own distinctive visual language and original themes as well. I like in particular that it introduces first princess with defined artistic inclinations, her longing for open world expressed through her paintings, recreation of the universe inside the walls she’s trapped within.

And there’s a personal touch behind the concept: not just animator Clen Keane designed the character in likeness of his daughter and successor Claire, she herself developed ideas for workings of Rapunzel’s creative mind through the diary-like notes, and many of works belonging to the character in supplementary materials (and in the animated series) are made by her as well. It’s a love for the craft reflected in a creation itself in the form of wonderful meta element.

Bruno’s character is an interesting mirror to Rapunzel’s, as his story contains similar elements in more ambiguous, less fairytale-clear aspect. Like her, he’s been confined in a tower with a purpose of service with his obtained magical gift, like her, he possesses creative mind, and like her, he’s more than his gift and eventually letting go of it as it doesn’t define his essence. The difference is, unlike Punzie, Bruno, in pursue of following his heart’s call, leaves the tower just to subject himself to even stronger confinement, and in the end has to face and resolve his family issues without running from it, because in real life, your demanding parent is less likely to turn to be an evil witch who’s got you stolen from your actual perfect royal family.