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Description
The artwork here is called "The Swimming Lesson" done by myself some time in 1998. It was done during a time that I was taking a break from working for the Australian Disney Animation Studio. Though I have worked as a Disney Animator, this art is not a Disney sanctioned artwork. It is fan art. It is Ariel as I saw her, and as I feel she was represented by Glen Keane in the original film in the Grotto singing sequence.
About a year after I did this artwork I ended up rejoining Disney to work on TLM2:Return to The Sea, where I worked on both Ariel and her daughter Melody. The new model for Ariel for that film was a little different from the feature, and made her look somewhat younger. I think from memory that they had her waist-fin placed higher, and removed her bellybutton, plus they made her waist and body thicker all around.
During 1992-94 I did the ElfQuest:WaveDancers comic book series Published by Warp Graphics, which I was a co-creator on and the artist. A whole host of characters that were mer-elves was created for this series, some with tails and some with legs. Tilaweed was for me the ultimate mermaid in an Elfin form, and she became my personal mascot for the series.
During the publication of the series, there were occasional comments that the art looked like a cross between ElfQuest and Fern Gully, and also that is looked like TLM on steroids. I found this all quite amusing, as I was doing the art as it came naturally to me, but the comments did interest me to do a work that showed the difference between the lead mermaid character from Disneys' TLM, Ariel, and my own mermaid Tilaweed from WaveDancers. Wendy Pini, the co-creator of the original ElfQuest series had a similar situation where some people compared her elves with the elves from the Bakshi film Wiz2ards. She ended up doing a side to side yet interactive comparison of the two lead elves from Wiz2ards and ElfQuest. To me this comparison artwork showed very clearly that the designs were very different with the only similarity being that they both happened to be elves.
Thus my own art of "The Swimming Lesson" was created as a direct response to these types of comments in the spirit of how Wendy Pini reacted to similar comments of her own work.
As a point of interest, this was also my first photoshop painting.
Tilaweed is the character in "The Swimming Lesson" with Ariel. I wanted to show Tilaweed and Ariel as they were depicted within their own worlds. Ariel has a simple shadow and is painted in simple animation block colors, whereas Tilaweed was molded with detailed color to emulate the hand painted finish I gave her in the comic book series. The comparison was to show how different the characters looked from each other on a design level, and how their worlds were also so different in how they were depicted in their treatment. I also wanted the art to stand alone as an artwork, so I created a scenario where the two could be interactive, so I though of the idea of a swimming lesson, in a similar way that Elisa Dolittle is taught to speak and walk with grace and poise in the film "My Fair Lady".
So, it s not a depiction of Ariel with her mother, and was never intended to be. It is an amalgam artwork showing Ariel and Tilaweed, two of my favorite mermaids, both of which I have worked on professionally, and one of which (Tilaweed) that I own with Julie Ditrich. To me, it shows two designs that are very different with the only similarity being that they both happened to be mermaids.
The copyright to this unprinted/unpublished (except online) fan artwork is:
"The Swimming Lesson" © 1998 Jozef Szekeres, Tilaweed © 1998 Black Mermaid Productions, Ariel © 1998 Disney.
It can also be seen at my own website:
[link]
PS, I'm not certain how I let it happen, but I've lost the original file of this artwork, probably because it was my first PhotoShop artwork that I did. If there is anyone out there that has a larger version of it, as it has been online on various sites for years, can you please let me know so I can get a copy of it. Terry Richards may have a larger file of it...I hope you see this.
PSS, Here are illegal and counterfeit usages of my artwork. My artwork has been taken from my deviantart gallery page, my signature removed and the artwork "doctored", and then used without my permission, without a contract of usage, or payments to me. Not only that. The BlackMermaidProductions (BMP) owned character "Tilaweed" (from Elf-Fin, and previously in 1993-4 from WaveDancers) is being used without permission or payment to BMP. That's is of course besides the fact that the Disney owned Intellectual Property of Ariel is being used in the same illegal way.
The Ebay seller that is illegally selling counterfeit products, illegally using my artworks is: offerbest4u
Please write to them and let them know...This is wrong.
The illegal counterfeit item on ebay (all up, I found 5 listings of this item with my artwork...all 10+ available per listing):
[link]
and
[link]
and
[link]
My original sketch:
[link]
My final art:
[link]
About a year after I did this artwork I ended up rejoining Disney to work on TLM2:Return to The Sea, where I worked on both Ariel and her daughter Melody. The new model for Ariel for that film was a little different from the feature, and made her look somewhat younger. I think from memory that they had her waist-fin placed higher, and removed her bellybutton, plus they made her waist and body thicker all around.
During 1992-94 I did the ElfQuest:WaveDancers comic book series Published by Warp Graphics, which I was a co-creator on and the artist. A whole host of characters that were mer-elves was created for this series, some with tails and some with legs. Tilaweed was for me the ultimate mermaid in an Elfin form, and she became my personal mascot for the series.
During the publication of the series, there were occasional comments that the art looked like a cross between ElfQuest and Fern Gully, and also that is looked like TLM on steroids. I found this all quite amusing, as I was doing the art as it came naturally to me, but the comments did interest me to do a work that showed the difference between the lead mermaid character from Disneys' TLM, Ariel, and my own mermaid Tilaweed from WaveDancers. Wendy Pini, the co-creator of the original ElfQuest series had a similar situation where some people compared her elves with the elves from the Bakshi film Wiz2ards. She ended up doing a side to side yet interactive comparison of the two lead elves from Wiz2ards and ElfQuest. To me this comparison artwork showed very clearly that the designs were very different with the only similarity being that they both happened to be elves.
Thus my own art of "The Swimming Lesson" was created as a direct response to these types of comments in the spirit of how Wendy Pini reacted to similar comments of her own work.
As a point of interest, this was also my first photoshop painting.
Tilaweed is the character in "The Swimming Lesson" with Ariel. I wanted to show Tilaweed and Ariel as they were depicted within their own worlds. Ariel has a simple shadow and is painted in simple animation block colors, whereas Tilaweed was molded with detailed color to emulate the hand painted finish I gave her in the comic book series. The comparison was to show how different the characters looked from each other on a design level, and how their worlds were also so different in how they were depicted in their treatment. I also wanted the art to stand alone as an artwork, so I created a scenario where the two could be interactive, so I though of the idea of a swimming lesson, in a similar way that Elisa Dolittle is taught to speak and walk with grace and poise in the film "My Fair Lady".
So, it s not a depiction of Ariel with her mother, and was never intended to be. It is an amalgam artwork showing Ariel and Tilaweed, two of my favorite mermaids, both of which I have worked on professionally, and one of which (Tilaweed) that I own with Julie Ditrich. To me, it shows two designs that are very different with the only similarity being that they both happened to be mermaids.
The copyright to this unprinted/unpublished (except online) fan artwork is:
"The Swimming Lesson" © 1998 Jozef Szekeres, Tilaweed © 1998 Black Mermaid Productions, Ariel © 1998 Disney.
It can also be seen at my own website:
[link]
PS, I'm not certain how I let it happen, but I've lost the original file of this artwork, probably because it was my first PhotoShop artwork that I did. If there is anyone out there that has a larger version of it, as it has been online on various sites for years, can you please let me know so I can get a copy of it. Terry Richards may have a larger file of it...I hope you see this.
PSS, Here are illegal and counterfeit usages of my artwork. My artwork has been taken from my deviantart gallery page, my signature removed and the artwork "doctored", and then used without my permission, without a contract of usage, or payments to me. Not only that. The BlackMermaidProductions (BMP) owned character "Tilaweed" (from Elf-Fin, and previously in 1993-4 from WaveDancers) is being used without permission or payment to BMP. That's is of course besides the fact that the Disney owned Intellectual Property of Ariel is being used in the same illegal way.
The Ebay seller that is illegally selling counterfeit products, illegally using my artworks is: offerbest4u
Please write to them and let them know...This is wrong.
The illegal counterfeit item on ebay (all up, I found 5 listings of this item with my artwork...all 10+ available per listing):
[link]
and
[link]
and
[link]
My original sketch:
[link]
My final art:
[link]
Image size
461x759px 132.89 KB
© 2007 - 2024 Jozef-Szekeres
Comments134
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Awesome work and cool idea!