BlueSky Studios, which is owned by Fox Film Filmed Entertainment and helped bring the movie Ice Age to the screen, has a weekly challenge for their staff in which artists, animators and others are given a subject and asked to draw their interpretation of it. The work is displayed on the BlueSky Studios Challenge blog, and it's worth checking out. Some of the subjects are things like movie robots or dinosaurs, but there are also a bunch of great drawings of television characters, such as the Muppets ( I love this humanized version of Bert) and SpongeBob SquarePants. Also take a look at the '80s cartoon characters challenge, which includes this film noir version of Inspector Gadget. I love seeing these characters completely re-imagined the same way I love it when a band covers another band's song and completely changes it, making it their own. I'd love to see whole animated programs re-imagined this way, which wouldn't be anything new since The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Mighty Mouse, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Beany and Cecil were all at one time brought back by different artists with a whole new design. Still, I'd love to see more of that.

[via Cartoon Brew]