17 December 2023

Doctor Who Meets Disney: When Worlds Collide

A young girl, frightened and alone save for her small animal companions, comes across a strange blue box in a forest clearing.  She is wary of the this new addition to the woodland but senses that inside there could be something or someone wonderful: perhaps she will find more questions than answers but she is still drawn towards it....

Hang on... Snow White and the Tardis? Wait a second, Ariel, the Little Mermaid and the Tardis? What's going on here?

Although they inhabit two quite different fictional universes there are similarities between the legend of the two-hearted man in the blue box and the myths and fables of the worlds created by Walt Disney (with a little help from his friends).  At least that must be how it seemed to Massachusetts based artist and illustrator Karen Hallion.  Her latest works show the points at which these two worlds collide in a simply charming and evocative fashion.

Hallion went to Ringling College of Art and Design in Florida, a beautifully situated hotbed of contemporary artistic excellence – Kuriositas has featured a large number of animation projects from the college’s undergraduates in the past.  After graduating with a BFA in Illustration, Hallion went on to become an elementary school art teacher.

Now, however, she is pursuing her career as an artist full-time (education’s loss is our gain in this instance) and she has done licensed work for Marvel, Lucas Arts, Hasbro, and Cartoon Network. She also allows her fancy to take flight - hence the good Doctor meeting the likes of Ariel, Belle, Rapunzel, Snow White and many others.

Although her work is a great deal more varied than the Doctor Meets Disney selection I have chosen to show you, these particular pieces caught my eye because, as you know if you are Kuriositas regular, I have had a life-long love affair with both Doctor Who and the works of Disney.  Imagine my joyous spluttering when I came across these crossovers on Hallion’s fantastic Etsy site.

As well as work which combines the realm of the Doctor with the domain of Disney, Hallion’s work features other galaxies of the far far away variety.  If I tell you that as well as her husband and two young sons she lives with two cats called Obi and Kenobi you will get my drift.

I would like to thank Karen Hallion for her very kind permission to share these pieces of wonderful art with you.  Click on any of the images to get to her Etsy page or click here.