Filip Hodas is a renowned and somewhat famous Czech digital artist known for his portrayal of popular pop culture figures in interesting and often dark ways. Recently, he made waves with his “Cartoon Fossils” piece which took famous cartoon figures and made their skulls in an anatomically correct way. By that, I don’t mean he took Spongebob and remade him as an actual sponge, or Goofy and remade him as an actual dog, though that would be interesting.
In fact, he took their depictions as is from popular culture and then imagined what it would be like if they died and became fossils. Hence the name, Cartoon Fossils, and the way he did it required him to use his digital artistry to astounding degrees. People were as impressed as they were perturbed, and for Creepy fans such as yourself, it’s basically all you could ever ask for. You can follow him for more up-to-date events below!
Source: Instagram || Behance || Facebook
When asked, Filip Hodas outlined why he did what he did.
I always enjoyed creating skulls, so I decided to combine my skull passion with 3D and some of my favorite childhood cartoon characters.
Initially, I wanted to make them stylized as dinosaur fossils set up in a museum environment but later decided against it, as the skulls didn’t look very recognizable on their own – especially with parts broken or missing. That’s why I opted for a less damaged look and also added some assets to each of the characters. To make it more cartoony, I decided to contrast the realistic look of the skull with colorful flat backgrounds.
The main goal of the series was to get better at sculpting and to experiment with Zbrush to Substance Painter workflow. For each skull, I tried to adjust and improve the workflow which resulted in quite visible differences between the first (Canis Goofus) and the last in the series (Anas Scroogius). Throughout the series, I also tried to push the procedural capabilities in Painter.
What about you? Would you want more anatomically correct cartoon characters? Tell us down in the comments!