Ashley Spinelli - Art major by day, roller derby star by night.

September 25, 2012 7:14 PM

Celeste doodles grown-up versions of characters from Hey Arnold, Rugrats, and Recess - most of them going into the arts, alt lifestyles, or hipsterdom.
posted by divabat (24 comments total)

Now I want to see Ren and Stimpy as hipster 20 somethings. I imagine they'd start an experimental band with lots of synths and tape loops.
posted by mcmile at 7:19 PM on September 25, 2012 [2 favorites]

Rhonda Wellington Lloyd

Attended Princeton for one year, experienced a breakdown and dropped out. She modeled, traveled, and is now enrolled at FIT.

Last seen running around a very rainy, very blue Los Angeles in the company of one, Rick Deckard.
posted by sendai sleep master at 7:28 PM on September 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

Gerald from Hey Arnold got incredibly sexy oh my god kill me.
posted by oinopaponton at 7:53 PM on September 25, 2012 [5 favorites]

My son would know these characters better than I would but I have an overwhelming urge to fill in the details. You know, drug addiction, petty crime, questionable hook-ups, alcohol abuse, STDs, murder. That's right, I said murder. As in the beating death of a homeless man by Stinky and Sid after a three day meth jag. Sure, they may not have meant to kill him but hey, dead is dead. That man would would probably be alive today if those two had chosen a different alley to stop and piss in...
posted by MikeMc at 7:57 PM on September 25, 2012 [2 favorites]

The second page has doodles of Magic Schoolbus, but no backstory.
posted by divabat at 8:01 PM on September 25, 2012

Seeing these characters from the 90's dressed and looking so 80's is really messing with my sense of temporal flow.
posted by sourwookie at 8:12 PM on September 25, 2012 [3 favorites]

The second page has doodles of Magic Schoolbus

I still like this version better.
posted by radwolf76 at 8:28 PM on September 25, 2012

sourwookie: "Seeing these characters from the 90's dressed and looking so 80's is really messing with my sense of temporal flow."

In that case, whatever you do, don't rewatch Buffy, and especially don't take note that the first season took started at the end of the 90s.
posted by schmod at 8:29 PM on September 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

These are neat. The art alone doesn't quite do it for me, but the one-sentence backstories are perfect.

And, really, Angelica as a reality TV star is just spot-on perfect. Thinking back on it, Rugrats was a pretty dark satire...
posted by schmod at 8:37 PM on September 25, 2012

Gerald from Hey Arnold got incredibly sexy oh my god kill me.

Have thought too much about hipster Arnold and Carlos from the Magic School Bus. Time for a cold shower.
posted by andrewesque at 9:00 PM on September 25, 2012

Seeing these characters from the 90's dressed and looking so 80's is really messing with my sense of temporal flow.

The 90s were 20 years ago.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:10 PM on September 25, 2012

I am sad that so many beloved characters made terrible decisions about their education.
posted by karmiolz at 9:18 PM on September 25, 2012 [3 favorites]

I love this more than I can possibly say.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 9:37 PM on September 25, 2012

I feel really weird that I'm now attracted to the grown up versions of a lot of cartoon little girls.
posted by cmoj at 10:07 PM on September 25, 2012

oh geez, my first thought at reading their backstory was "It says they've gown up, but college isn't grown-up" and now I'm officially old.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:18 PM on September 25, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm so happy that the one kid who grew up to be completely average and unremakable was the one who would benefit from it the most: Stoop Kid.
posted by BiggerJ at 1:06 AM on September 26, 2012

I think Spinelli would actually look and dress exactly the same. She'd just be taller.

Did Arnold have some kind of advanced cranial surgery and ear-pinning?

In fact they all look as if besides growing up they've just been on some kind of makeover show. Which is fair enough, except that part of the charm of the originals was the honesty with which they captured the snotty, ugly reality of kid life.

One of the things I liked about Arnold, for example, was the way Helga Pataki could be ungainly, monobrowed, weirdly hairstyled, bellligerent and a bully, but still intelligent, secretly romantic, and overall rather sympathetic. I don't really want to see her as a well-adjusted fashionable twenty-something with plucked eyebrows.
posted by Segundus at 2:40 AM on September 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

I don't think they'd all be artsy types. I would have predicted Angelica Pickles majoring in communications at State U and working at some huge corporation (and getting promoted to middle management fairly quickly). She'd marry her college boyfriend, and the wedding planning would be peppered with screaming matches between her and her mother. When they're 30, her husband will walk in on her talking to Cynthia, and write an anonymous AskMe in which he is advised to DTMFA. He doesn't.
posted by Metroid Baby at 4:57 AM on September 26, 2012 [4 favorites]

Brilliant! :)
posted by Hanuman1960 at 6:54 AM on September 26, 2012

I like it! Although in at least one case the prominent nose was noticeably normalized (moreso than plastic surgery could do, I think!)
posted by Glinn at 7:05 AM on September 26, 2012

Now I want to see what became of Fat Albert & the Cosby kids, the Scooby gang, Ernie Devlin, and the Chan clan.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:13 AM on September 26, 2012 [1 favorite]

Now I want to see what became of Fat Albert & the Cosby kids, the Scooby gang, Ernie Devlin, and the Chan clan.

Dead or retired...
posted by fuzzypantalones at 8:34 AM on September 26, 2012

Wow, what are the chances that all but one of those kids would grow up skinny?

(That's not a criticism of this artist, specifically -- these are a lot of fun. But somehow "what would they look like grown up" is a question that makes me think about the people we like to look at vs. the people we actually are)
posted by gurple at 8:52 AM on September 26, 2012

And they all have the Tip O'Neill nose of a chronic day drinker.
posted by sourwookie at 12:19 PM on September 26, 2012