from Mickey “Fu Manchu” Mouse!
I was toying with the idea celebrating the release (finally!!) of Mickey Mouse into Public Domain.
Then
Elliot Lessing beat me to the punch by a few hours so I had to do it.
But as a compliant citizen of these United States, I’ve embargoed this painstaking painful rendering from public consumption until 12:01 AM, Pacific Standard Time.
If you want to see a fun video on the subject, check out Jake’s analysis on the Corridor Crew.
To get political for a moment (before things get really political this year), I can’t help but rue the opportunity cost of coddling Disney over the past four decades. We can’t see what didn’t happen, but I suspect that our artistic cultural malaise is partly due to giving mega-corps an extended monopoly to milk their cultural content when they should have been inventing new properties (like a Chibi Mannequin) to opiate the masses.
Then again, if I’ve learned anything from foreign cinema, the machine always wins. <Insert commentary on late stage capitalism and neo-liberalism>
Oh well, AI will solve all our problems.
Prompt: Mickey Mouse as Steamboat Willie with a Fu Manchu moustache to hide mistaken shading during the initial drawing. Style to be fountain pen with purple ink on a lined notebook. Add handwritten calligraphy to celebrate the New Year in Gothic blackletter and label the drawing with cramped Uncial.
,
(The kids thought the first drawing’s head was a bit small so I gave the people what they wanted)