_{The only two who did not move were the tin soldier and the little dancer. She held herself perfectly erect on tiptoe with both arms outstretched. He was equally steadfast on his one leg; his eyes never left her for a moment.}
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When I was a little girl, all I ever drew was ballerinas, and ice-skaters. Seriously, that's all I ever drew. I of course later branched out to elves and shit like that, but what I drew most often were ballerinas and ice-skaters.

So, it was no surprise that I loved the Steadfast Tin Soldier. Both the story, and Disney's short film. The Steadfast Tin Soldier is my favorite segment of Fantasia 2000.

Fantasia 2000... it's on my 'I like it, but...' list. Whoever thought of making flying whales to The Pines of Rome needs to be slapped. It nearly ruined the entire movie for me. Fantasia 2000 was also too short. Like, WAY too short. The original Fantasia was like... two hours! And the new one was only just over an hour. Lame. But, besides those two main gripes, I like it.

It's a very rare occasion that I like the changes made to a story for its movie... Mr. Andersen was a wonderful storyteller, but he just didn't like happy endings, I guess. The poor Tin Soldier and Paper Ballerina totally deserved a happy ending, so I'm perfectly happy with its new ending for the short film.

Shostakovich's concerto was perfect for this story. Pitch perfect.

For this one, I got the crazy idea of being creative. For the Paper Ballerina, I did her lineart in pencil, and her colors in my painting style. For the Tin Soldier, I did his lineart in ink, and his colors in my cel-shading style. I like the effect. <:^) And, surprisingly, doing these two different methods together didn't take me too much longer to complete than my usual stuff.

I would have made the title ' Paper Ballerina and Tin Soldier', but the ' Paper' wouldn't fit. >:^P

Couples Collection

Commission Information

Pencil, ink and CG.

Paper Ballerina and Tin Soldier (c) Hans Christian Andersen and Disney
Artwork (c) Me! Jaclyn Renata Weber.