One of Disney’s artists who helped illustrate the iconic 1990s film The Lion King recently posted a moving animated tribute to the famous African lion Cecil killed by a US dentist.
Aaron Blaise, an American illustrator and self-proclaimed animal lover, said he made the tribute to help raise awareness about the killing of African animals by hunters. “It drives me crazy when I see these beautiful creatures destroyed for no good reason,” he wrote on his blog.
“When I heard the news about Cecil I got inspired to create a tribute image. It’s not much but hopefully it will make people think.”
The time-lapse video shows Blaise, who also worked on Mulan and Pocahontas, painstakingly drawing a majestic image of Cecil in Photoshop.
The end result shows the lion looking down imperiously from the heavens accompanied by a quote from The Lion King: “Look at the stars, the great kings of the past look down upon us from those stars.”