Realistic Cartoons

July 17, 2006 2:55 PM

Realistic potraits cartoons: are there any art available of known cartoon/comic characters drawn as though they were real-life potraits?

I'm not looking for things like their skeletal systems; rather, I'm looking for something closer to this Oh My Gods! fan art (it still looks cartoonish, but the original characters looked like Lego toys).

Basically imagine that the cartoon character in question is human, and someone took a photograph. Anyone drawn such "photographs"?

posted by divabat to media & arts (25 answers total)

I have no idea from whence this came.
posted by jenovus at 2:59 PM on July 17, 2006

I'm not sure it's quite what you're looking for, but there was an episode of the Simpsons ("Lady Bouvier's Lover") where Homer imagines his kids looking human (i.e., Caucasian skin, five fingers on each hand, real eyes with irises and pupils...)
posted by Lucinda at 3:01 PM on July 17, 2006

Here's Donald Trachte's realistic portrait of cartoon character Henry, mentioned here.
posted by maryh at 3:16 PM on July 17, 2006

posted by naxosaxur at 3:18 PM on July 17, 2006

the artist Alex Ross specializes in photorealistic paintings of superheroes. google his name and you should come up with a bunch of results.
posted by jtron at 3:20 PM on July 17, 2006

Take a look at the South Park screen here:

http://www.punkasspunk.com/videolog/index.php?d=20051230
posted by martinrebas at 3:21 PM on July 17, 2006

From South Park
posted by scallion at 3:22 PM on July 17, 2006

D'oh!
posted by scallion at 3:22 PM on July 17, 2006

Mario and Luigi
posted by staggernation at 3:26 PM on July 17, 2006

Calvin & Hobbes had a couple of strips drawn in a more realistic style (a la Brenda Starr, Judge Parker, Rex Morgan, etc).

I was looking for the one where Calvin & Susie are playing house to Calvin's frustration, pretending that they're married and their "baby is a rabbit?!?" but couldn't find it online. There's an example in this article (the one where they're playing doctor).
posted by neda at 4:00 PM on July 17, 2006

National Lampoon, back in the 70's, ran a series of just such a thing. Portraits of cartoon characters if they were real. Sort of in a Drew Friedman sort of realism. Popeye and Orphan Annie were especially disturbing.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:03 PM on July 17, 2006

In his later life, Chuck Jones spent a lot of his time doing paintings. Some where of classic subjects (still lifes, nudes) but a lot of them were attempts to facetiously "classicalize" images of the classic Warner Brother characters, often by imitating existing impressionist paintings.

Some of them can be seen here. For example: Bugs playing the piano

Another example from the website of Chuck Jones' daughter: the Grinch

I can't find an online copy of my favorite, a take on "The Scream" showing Elmer as the screamer, with Daffy and Bugs behind him respectively holding "Rabbit Season" and "Duck Season" signs.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:41 PM on July 17, 2006

there's this futurama image, by british artist jon dixon:

posted by ab3 at 5:44 PM on July 17, 2006

Check out the original Marvel Masterpieces series from 1992, the year Joe Jusko did all the art.

It is t3h pure awesome.
posted by Alexandros at 5:54 PM on July 17, 2006

Pluto, a current series by Japanese manga artist Naoki Urasawa, is a "realistic" retelling of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (the episode "The Biggest Robot on Earth"). The boy in the link to Amazon is Atom.

Here are a couple funny ones I found:
Doraemon. Original (Flash).
Anpanman. Original.

Though I guess these aren't really photo-like, which is what you're asking for...
posted by misozaki at 6:17 PM on July 17, 2006

Whoops, sorry about the bold there.
posted by misozaki at 6:19 PM on July 17, 2006

There was a www.fark.com Photoshop contest a while back that's theme was along these lines (create real-life representations of animated characters); it had some really good stuff but I can't for the life of me find it.
posted by shokod at 7:39 PM on July 17, 2006

The South Park one is just the sort of thing I was looking for! That's awesome! (And I'm not even a South Park fan)

It just occured to me that any live-action version of a comic/cartoon would work, so in this case there's Scooby Doo and Garfield (except for the actual Garfield the Cat). What else fits this?

(doesn't have to be movies; even a bunch of people acting out the cartoon work. As long as you can look at them and go "Hey! That's from [Cartoon!]. I've seen fan tributes to Weebl's Kenya and Something Positive that do this.)
posted by divabat at 10:00 PM on July 17, 2006

Making photorealistic Far Sides is a recurring theme on Worth1000's photoshop contests. The cat in the frying pan one is brilliant.

Curious about Alexandros' comment, I did some Googling for Joe Jusko — this, this, and of course this are what I came up with, but unfortunately those particular characters all looked 'human' to begin with.
posted by rafter at 10:19 PM on July 17, 2006

That National Lampoon piece Thorzdad is refering to is called "Harsh Realities". It was written by PJ O'Rourke and illustrated by Wayne McLoughlin, and it sounds like exactly the thing you're looking for. It was supposed to portray the actual people that Popeye, Little Orphan Annie, Dick Tracy and a few others were based on, and it was done in a hyper-realistic style. Popeye was especially disturbing, IIRC. I'm pretty sure it was in a collection called The Very Large Book of Comical Funnies (which I could've sworn I had, but after tearing half the house apart, I regret I don't.) Maybe someone else on the green has a copy they could scan?
posted by maryh at 10:26 PM on July 17, 2006

Based on the gag of improving Garfield by erasing his thought bubbles, there's Arbuckle, where the strips are redrawn more realistically.

The site takes user submissions, so the quality is all over the map.
posted by O9scar at 11:31 PM on July 17, 2006

any live-action version of a comic/cartoon would work,

In that case... how about You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown?
posted by misozaki at 11:43 PM on July 17, 2006

also RotoScoping from here:
posted by BillyG at 8:34 AM on July 18, 2006

woops: MetaFilter
posted by BillyG at 8:35 AM on July 18, 2006

BillyG: RotoScoping takes real people and makes them into cartoon-type characters. I'm kinda looking for the other way around.

(though it's a good term for what many young people call "vectors", which are really illustrations of people.)
posted by divabat at 1:31 AM on July 19, 2006