Hello Totoro ~ in Watercolors!

        Hooray! My sister, Lizzie, made me a DVD copy of our old VHS video of "My Neighbor Totoro." This is one of my very favorite childhood films. This film was originally produced by Ghibli Studio films in Japan in 1988. It was then dubbed in English and released in the US in the early 1990's. The reason I am so excited is because the original English dubbing of this film cannot be obtained on DVD. In 2006 the English was re-dubbed with the voices of Dakota and Elle Fanning as the main characters. IT IS AWFUL. Maybe I just feel this way because I LOVED the original, but I am also greatly bothered by the fact that they changed some wordage and even the names of a few things in the re-dub of the movie.


          So, I decided to draw on the DVD because my sister, Megan, also drew Totoro pictures on Lizzie's DVD copy of the movie. And who wants to look at a plain silver disk with plain lettering of just the movie title? I wish I had a picture of the other one too. For comparison. Well, here is my design.





        I also decided that since I have lots of empty DVD cases I would make a cute slip to go in a case. First I drew the picture in ink. Then I decided that I would like it in color, so I watercolored the picture. It's not really very professional looking, but I think the home-made look is kind of cute.  
         Now, I will sit and enjoy the movie and think of the days when we were little girls sprawled across the living-room floor, looking up at the TV, and counting our collections of acorns.