Into the Belly of the Whale: Pinocchio and Monstro

The swallowing of Pinocchio and Gepetto by Monstro - a huge, destructive and vengeful whale - is one of the key scenes of this classic story.

I chose this scene because it represents one of the most essential components of Disney storytelling - Joseph Campbell's narrative pattern that we call the heroes journey.

The fifth stage of this journey is "the belly of the whale" - a dangerous place where the hero's transformation takes place. According to Campbell, the hero is then close to defeat (or even death), but but having overcome the threat, he comes out of the whole situation strengthened.

The right part of the construction shows that all these great stories started on a simple piece of paper, with a simple line, more than 100 years ago. I wanted this simple black and white drawing to turn into a three-dimensional figure of a whale.

Thanks to the fact that the whale is hollow inside, the beast consists of less than 500 bricks. The rest of the structure is less than 300 parts.