Cartoon characters come in for all kinds of heavy treatment during their on-screen adventures. They get blown up, they fall off cliffs, and, yes they even get steam-rollered and still live to see another day. But have ever wondered what they would look like if they were stretched through some kind of alien time warp that deconstructed them into their constituent colours? No? Well, we're going to show you anyway because the results look stunning.
A Peruvian design studio has taken a range of our favourite childhood characters and stretched them out into strips, arches and ribbons in a form of deconstruction that creates some eye-catching results and highlights the characters' colours. They've applied to the treatment to Disney and Hanna Barbera classics like Mickey Mouse and The Flintstones to relatively recent stars like Finn from Aventure Time (if you're an illustrator yourself, see our guide to the best digital art software).
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(Image credit: Dodoconyoyo)
Shiver me timbers! Bugs Bunny and Popeye get stretched on the rack. Click right for Mickey and Garfield(Image credit: Dodoconyoyo)
The project is the work of Lima-based branding and design studio Dodoconyoyo, and was inspired by a mix of nostalgia and design investigation. The studio says on its Behance profile: "cartoons have always been and will be part of our life. For as far back as we can remember, their colours were the ones that somehow defined our way of defining combinations in our minds."
Mickey becomes bold lines of black, white, red and yellow, and Popeye becomes a stretch toboggan of familiar colours. There are a couple that might be less familiar for those who haven't kept up with more recent cartoons – the gumball machine Benson Dunwoody from Regular Show, for example, who's transformed into an arch of blue, pink and red.
Sponge Bob, Finn and Benson Dunwoody get the same treatment (Image credit: Dodoconyoyo)
The results show just how familiar we are with the colours of our favourite cartoon characters, which is perhaps why people react so furiously when cartoon characters get a makeover, like Minnie Mouse with her new outfit. We love anything that explores their design, although we're still getting over the view of Mickey Mouse from above.
If you want to experiment with your own deconstructions of cartoon characters, see the best prices on Adobe's Creative Cloud suite of apps below, or see our guide to getting a Creative Cloud discount.
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Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.
