Does anyone else remember that animated movie from the ’90s that’s like a sequel to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, except Snow White goes into hiding to escape the evil queen’s jerk of a brother and meets up with the dwarves’ female cousins instead? Because that’s what this image by Andy Musser reminds me of, except a thousand percent cuter.
Musser recounts his process in creating the above image on his blog (where there are a lot of cool preliminary sketches, by the way):
Researching dwarfs also got me thinking about how sexist the story of “Snow White” is, all the females are either evil or helpless. So my solution was to make the dwarfs women and to show Snow White’s mad carpentry skills. Ok, so maybe the Snow White in my illustration needs some practice with home repair, but my logic was that she had built some bird houses before and was slowly honing her craft. In any case, my intent was to show that she’s not entirely helpless, and she’s doing the dwarfs a favor by staying, not just mooching off them because she’s a spoiled princess.
As I understand it, the Disney Snow White was also doing the dwarves a favor by sticking around because they were slovenly, unkempt folks whom she constantly cleaned up after–but yeah, carpentry is definitely cooler and way less stereotypical than that.
Here, have a dwarf close-up:
How great are those hats. I actually can’t stand it.
(via Andy Musser)
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