Belle (Beauty and the Beast)
Mulan
Ariel (The Little Mermaid)
Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)
Esmeralda (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Jasmine (Aladdin)
Megara (Hercules)
Pocahontas
Adding that touch of reality to iconic Disney princesses is something art student Jirka Väätäinen excels at. The fantastic photo manipulations are a successful attempt at bringing these beautiful characters to life.
This project began with Jirka’s fascination for the character Ursula from The Little Mermaid. “I had always liked her character so much that I decided to give myself a little challenge,” he says. “I had so much fun with it that I could not stop… and here we are.”
With an overwhelming response from Tumblr and blogs, Väätäinen received “a lot of lovely feedback” and quite a few requests to create even more characters. “I can’t really stop now, can I?,” he rhetorically asks. “It’s not like I ever had a bigger plan with these, so I’m just going to continue having fun and make more characters that I’m personally inspired by.”
So how, exactly, does Väätäinen go about creating these? “I find photos all over the Internet and then combine them in Photoshop,” he says. “I don’t base the characters on only one real person or picture – I pick, mix and blend features. I also do some digital painting, by hand, to make it all come together.”