#1 Belle
Belle may always have her nose in a book, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a cute nose. When pictured like this, Belle could easily be just a regular girl in a bookstore (the one you were thinking about giving your number to).
#2 Ariel
Chances are if you were a little girl (or boy) in the 90s, you, at one point or another, went around singing Ariel’s wordless song and you dolphin-kicked inswimming pools pretending you were a mermaid. No? Just us then? Point is, we really like seeing Ariel as a real person (or real half-person…or whatever).
#3 Aurora
Given the age of the film and the prevalence of Sleeping Beauty images on whatever the latest Disney toy is, Aurora is almost unrecognizable in her Briar Rose ensemble.
#4 Cinderella
One thing we really like about this series of portraits in that each character is depicted as they are throughout most of the film, rather than in their ballroom glory. It’s very rare to see Disney’s Cinderella dressed in something other than the light blue gown and famous glass slippers.
#5 Alice
We think Jirka does a great job of capturing the spirit of these characters. Little Alice seems in awe, curious, and maybe just a bit afraid, as one probably should in Wonderland.
#6 Pocahontas
Sure, the Disney version (and by default, the commonly accepted Western version) of Pocahontas’s tale are romanticized to the utmost. It wouldn’t make a very good children’s movie if the heroine was half the age of her love interest, and was later captured and held for ransom, and died in her early 20s.
#7 Snow White
The Disney Princess franchise is now huge (I mean really, there’s a Disney Princess version of everything. It’s like Hello Kitty), but Snow White was the very first.
#8 Esmeralda
Esmeralda’s an oft-forgotten character. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is quite different than most animated Disney films. No princess, no prince. Themes of religious persecution. Good fun.
#9 Jasmine
We love seeing just how realistic Jirka Väätäinen was able to make Jasmine. It’s easy for 2D characters to end looking very, well, flat, and we have to admire the detail here.
#10 Ursula
We find this version of Ursula unbelievably creepy and therefore unbelievably awesome. She has such exaggerated features in the movie and we think it’spretty cool to see them in the flesh.
#11 Mulan
Pretty spot on, eh? Mulan really doesn’t get enough credit. No, she’s not a princess, but she saved China! And she was a real person!
#12 Tiana
Notice, not the frog version. That would be weird.
We know that Jirka Väätäinen’s images are photo-manipulations and not straight up drawings, so we have to wonder whose eyes he used to get that twinkle Tiana has.
We know that Jirka Väätäinen’s images are photo-manipulations and not straight up drawings, so we have to wonder whose eyes he used to get that twinkle Tiana has.
#13 Jane
You kind of forget about Jane, don’t you? “Tarzan” was big when it came out but it hasn’t really had the staying power of other Disney films. All that aside, we never realized how close a resemblance Jane bears to Maggie Gyllenhaal.
#14 Rapunzel
We like Rapunzel. She’s a lot like us, really: creative, a bit wacky, spent most of her life in a single room…
Point is, this looks remarkably like the animation.
Point is, this looks remarkably like the animation.
