See portraits of Disney heroines re-imagined as 'real-life' women

Will Perkins
·Blogger
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen

Ever wanted to know what some of Disney’s most iconic animated characters would look like as real people?

With Disney rebooting or reimagining many of its animated classics as live-action movies (like the “Sleeping Beauty” prequel “Maleficent” and the upcoming Cinderella-inspired “Into the Woods”), audiences are likely to see many of these fairy tale characters in the flesh sooner rather than later. But in the meantime, there’s the work of Finnish graphic designer Jirka Väätäinen.

Started as a school project in 2011, the Helsinki-based artist "decided to entertain" himself by creating a photorealistic version “Little Mermaid” baddie Ursula. Väätäinen subsequently posted the results on his blog where it attracted a great deal of attention. His Ursula illustration was so popular that the artist then set to work re-imagining other Disney heroines and villains.

Here are some amazing examples of Väätäinen's ''Real Life Disney Girls" series:

Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen
Image by Jirka Väätäinen

It's pretty uncanny work. Translating the essence of a famous character from an animated form into something that looks photo-real is no small task. You can see the rest of Jirka Väätäinen's Disney illustrations here.

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