Tim Burton: Animator Turns Classic Disney Characters Gothic, Burton-Style


Tim Burton is best known for producing fantasy films with dark and gothic characters. A Russian animator loves Burton’s style so much that he recently turned some of Disney’s best known classic characters into gothic creations. Andrew Tarusov drew the 10 creepy illustrations based on how he thought Tim Burton would have designed them and then shared them online, according to Entertainment Weekly.

Anyone who’s fascinated with the darker elements of film is familiar with Tim Burton’s work. Burton is known for directing the 1988 supernatural comedy Beetlejuice, co-writing and directing the 1990 dark fantasy romance film Edward Scissorhands, and directing the 1999 horror film Sleepy Hollow. The 57-year-old American artist, film director, and producer even conceived the dark animated characters in the 1993 stop-motion fantasy musical film The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Other stop-motion fantasy and horror films followed The Nightmare Before Christmas, including the Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie. Tim Burton began experimenting with short stop-motion films as a pre-teen. Influenced as a child by British writer Roald Dahl, who also favored writing dark comedy and fantasy, Burton actually wrote, directed, and produced his first animated film at age 13 called The Island of Doctor Agor.

Burton’s Doctor Agor was loosely adapted from the science fiction novel The Island of Doctor Moreau written in the late 1800s by the “father of science fiction,” H.G. Wells.

After studying character animation at a university in California, Tim Burton went on to make a career out of creating dark, gothic films.

Since the early 1980s, Burton has certainly developed a style that’s all his own.

Refinery 29 describes Tim Burton’s fictional worlds as dark with long skeletal figures and sunken eyes, a style that one Russian-born, Los Angeles-based animator fell in love with. Andrew Tarusov prefers to draw vintage-style, but had an idea one day to merge Tim Burton’s style with Disney’s style.

Tarusov had already reimagined Disney princess characters in late 2015 in a pin-up series, but wondered what classic Disney characters would look like if Tim Burton had directed all of the Disney classic movies. That thought quickly turned into 10 posters that Andrew Tarusov shared on his personal website, Tarusov.com.

“First one was Bambi, and after it, the whole idea came up,” according to Tarusov.

Several classic Disney favorites, like Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and The Lion King were all re-designed, Burton-style, courtesy of 10-year animation professional Andrew Tarusov.

“I love how Burton’s style looks vintage, chic, and cute all at the same time. His work is often marketed as ‘horror’ movies, but at the same time, it’s not a horror… It could be any genre.”

The 10 gothic Disney posters haven’t been made into tangible prints yet, but Tarusov says anyone can download the files for a small donation and use them however they want, which should make both Disney fans and Tim Burton fans very happy.

Coincidentally, Tim Burton started his career at Walt Disney Productions in the animation department where he worked on The Fox and the Hound in 1981, Tron in 1982, and The Black Cauldron in 1985. Oddly enough, Disney fired Burton after only a few years because the company thought Frankenweenie was too dark and scary.

Disney picked Burton back up in 1993 to write and produce The Nightmare Before Christmas, and then again, in 2010 for Alice in Wonderland. More recently, Disney decided not to include Tim Burton in the next Alice in Wonderland film titled Alice Through the Looking Glass set to release in May, 2016. It is unknown as to why Burton will be absent, considering other cast members will return, including Mia Wasikowska as Alice, and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. However, Slash Film announced back in March of 2015 that Tim Burton will direct a live action remake of the classic Disney film, Dumbo, a beloved Disney character that did make it into Tarusov’s new art collection titled, What if Tim Burton directed all Disney classic movies?

[Image via YouTube]

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