Little Girl Embraces Quasimodo (Disney’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1996))

It’s time for a new Disney watercolor fan art, coming up on today’s post on The Autistic Animator’s Desk! This is very exciting, because this happens to be my very first fan art of one of Disney’s beautiful, and yet, epic animated movies of the Disney Renaissance-era. That’s right! Today, we’re going to explore on my first fan artwork of Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996).

Done in watercolor in a horizontal view at 12 x 9, it illustrates a sweet happy ending with Quasimodo the bell ringer is tenderly embraced by a little girl, who you see at the beginning of the film with Clopin telling the story. Quasimodo is finally accepted by the townspeople of Paris, with the reprise of the song “The Bells of Notre Dame”, and they celebrated for his victory in defeating Judge Claude Frollo and saving the gypsy girl, Esmeralda, with the help of Phoebus, the Captain of the Guards.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of my favorite Disney animated movies, released since 1996, based on the classic novel by Victor Hugo. I was a year and a half, when the movie came out, which I think it premiered in the summer of 1996, so I wasn’t two years old yet. However, my very first introduction to the film was seeing trailers from any of my Disney VHS copies, and even watching the scenes of the songs from the Disney Sing-Along-Songs on VHS. There were three songs I remembered seeing from the Sing-Along-Songs were “Topsy Turvy”, “Out There”, and “A Guy Like You”. At a very young age, I was very familiar with the characters, such as Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Frollo, Phoebus, Clopin, and the gargoyles Hugo, Victor, and Laverne. And of course, I do remember reading a Disney book about Esmeralda and her goat Djalhi my grandmother used to have for me, and she even used to own the VHS copy of the film, along with the rest of the Disney VHS copies in the basement for me and my brother, if we want to go downstairs and watch a Disney movie.

I end up watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame for the first time, when I was fourteen. Thanks to my grandmother who used to collect the Disney VHS copies for me and my brother, I decided to borrow the VHS copy of it, and took it home, so I can check it out. I did enjoy my very first viewing, and I would watch it again, and my brother would watch it with me. Once in a while, we would watch it in his room.

What I really love about this film are couple of things: music and animation. I absolutely love the music, thanks to the work of Alan Menken! It’s so beautiful and spectacular, and the choir is just amazing. You’ve got the songs by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, who had previously worked on writing songs for Pocahontas (1995), just a year before Hunchback of Notre Dame. I love “Out There”, it’s my favorite song from the film, because it’s just beautiful and breathtaking, and Tom Hulce, who voiced Quasimodo, gave such a beautiful performance for both speaking and singing. The animation in the movie is beautiful, the art is just amazing to look at, especially for backgrounds of the Notre Dame cathedral, whether it takes place from outside or inside. Gorgeous colors, amazing shadows, and beautiful lighting.

My favorite characters are Quasimodo and Esmeralda.

I have never read the original novel by Victor Hugo, titled as Notre Dame de Paris, but I knew the storyline in the book is very darker than the Disney film, and of course, after watching the film at fourteen, I have done my research on Hugo’s treatment. In the novel, Quasimodo was deaf, due to the loud sounds of the bells ringing, and he was named Quasimodo on the first Sunday after Easter. Eventually, if you have seen the Disney animated adaptation, or read the Victor Hugo novel, you can’t help but noticed the controversy behind the film, meaning adding dark elements, even bit of adult situations, such as lust, and you would see that with Frollo lusting for Esmeralda, and yet, he’s blaming her for it. However, Esmerald’s character is beautiful and yet, kind, and is willing to keep her people protected from harm. She is very kind to Quasimodo, even when she helps him, after he was being humiliated by cruelty from the townspeople in the Festival of Fools. Thanks to her kindness she gave him, Quasimodo was able to help Esmerald escape from the cathedral, after being forced by Frollo to be kept as prisoner in the cathedral.

As already mentioned at the beginning, this is my very first fan art of the film, as well as my first time drawing both Quasimodo and the little girl. What lead me to work on this project was going through feeling burnt out from doing digital drawing, and I just wanted a break. Then, the idea came up. The ending scene of Quasimodo and the little girl embracing is one of my favorite scenes, just because it’s so touching and you just want to cheer for Quasi and have him being accepted, after being isolated in the bell tower for twenty years in his life. And so, because I have never done a fan art from this movie, I thought I give it try. It was a fun project to work on, and I am so happy the way it turned out.

Interestingly, Quasimodo became the second deformed character, after I have done many drawings of the very first deformed character, Joseph Merrick, known as the Elephant Man, except Merrick was a real-life person. If you would like to see my illustrated drawings of The Elephant Man, you can find Parts One, Two, and Three on my blog.

🔔 Little Girl and Quasimodo Drawing 1 (Sketching & Cleaning Up) 🔔

The project begins in a late-afternoon in the late-week of March, just before Easter. In order for me to draw both Quasimodo and the little girl, as well as the cathedral background in the exact scene, I went on to Google images to look for the screenshot image, so I can use it as a guide for reference, and of course, I also used pictures of the little girl and Quasimodo, in separate images, so I would learn how to draw them for the first time.

I started off with sketching the entire drawing in light pencil, and once that’s done, I would trace the pencil outlines with ink sharpie pens. Two colors I used were black and purple. Black was for both characters and background, whereas purple was for outlines on the bottom of the little girl’s hat and sleeves.

Even though, I didn’t want to draw the fan art like copying it directly from the screenshot, but it’s okay if the approach looks different from it, in which it’s very much like how I approached for the watercolor drawing of Hades, the main villain from Disney’s Hercules (1997).

🔔 Little Girl and Quasimodo Drawing 2 (Painting the Drawing in Color) 🔔

The coloring process went on the next day, thanks to the magic of the watercolor pencil sets and couple of acrylic paints (black and dark brown), and then painting process went onto Thursday.

I wanted to start off with using the watercolor pencils to color the drawing first before I can use the acrylic paint to paint the door you’ll see on the left in watercolor medium, which I end painting it first before painting the rest of the drawing. The reason why I used both black and dark brown acrylic paint was because, it was easy for me to use to paint, and the black and dark brown pencils have been shaven so short, there was no way.

I’ll admit, I did use the dark brown pencil for coloring the skin on both Quasimodo and the little girl, and maybe on the walls on the cathedral, and I would use it again for adding shadows.

🔔 Little Girl and Quasimodo Drawing 3 (Adding Shadows and Complete) 🔔

So, Quasimodo, the little girl, and the cathedral background are painted in full color, but to finish the project, we move on to the final part of the process: adding shadows and details. I went back to use the watercolor pencils to color the shadows on the characters, but also use the black acrylic paint in watercolor medium to do the rest.

Before painting the shadows on the characters, I wanted to focus on detailing the Notre Dame cathedral background, such as adding wooden texture on the door and stone texture on the wall. Then finally, I painted the shadows on the characters to finish the project. After I had just finished, I remove the strips of tape around the drawing.

The fan art was finished on March 28th, 2024. This was a simple and yet, a fun project to work on for two days.

I hope you all have enjoyed reading on the first Hunchback of Notre Dame fan art in this topic, and who knows, I would like to do another one in the future.

The next post will be a new Don Bluth fan art, but the very first watercolor artwork on his film, An American Tail (1986), coming up next week on May 15th. And then, on May 20th, I’ll be sharing a second Disney watercolor fan art, but the second one from another favorite Disney film, Fantasia (1940), on the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’ with one of the dewdrop fairies in The Nutcracker Suite segment.

This year, I got to watch another animated version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame done by Burbank Films Australia from 1986, ten years before the Disney animated adaptation, which you can find it on Tubi. You can watch Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame on Disney+. I also recommend you watching the episode of Courage the Cowardly Dog called ‘The Hunchback of Nowhere’. It’s the eighth episode from Season One, and it features a Quasimodo-type character who befriends with Courage.

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