My interpretation of some of The Lion King's characters as humans instead of animals.

From left to right: Shenzi, young Simba, adult Simba, Scar and Timon.

Shenzi's trying to look cool, young Simba is wary of Shenzi, adult Simba is surprised to see his younger self standing right beside him, Scar is glaring down at Timon (either because he doesn't like him, or because he wants some of his candy) and Timon is eating gummy worms (instead of real worms like he might normally eat).

I had to put Shenzi in there because she's my favorite character, and Simba is the "obvious" choice because he's the main character. I'm not too fond of Scar and Timon is the character that I dislike the most, however I felt compelled to do them too. Scar seemed like he would work well as a human to me, so I figured "Why not?". Timon is debatably the most human-looking character in the movie in the first place (besides, perhaps, Rafiki), so I felt that it would be easy to humanize him: I just "had" to do it.

When I set out to do this, my main goal was not only to reinvision the characters as humans, but also to retain their essence. Simply drawing some generic human, giving him red hair, and calling him "human Simba" was unacceptable in my view. I tried to incorporate design elements from their original forms in such a way that it was still obvious that they were who I said they were.

I decided that retaining their essence was a more important goal than 'idealizing' them as attractive, perfect humans. Therefore, they still look a bit cartoony and perhaps even a bit strange for humans. Then again, the Super Mario Bros look kind of strange to be human, too.

The Lion King and all associated characters are (c) Disney