It was a huge weekend for animation news, wasn't it? Glen Keane, one of my biggest influences, resigned after 37 years(!?!) at Disney. The initial episodes of "The Legend of Korra" (the sequel series to the outstanding "Avatar: The Last Airbender") were temporarily released a little early.
And, what else what else? It was kinda important... Oh yeah! "The Sweatbox" appeared online for a while.
Ah, "The Sweatbox", the legendary documentary made by Trudie Styler that chronicles the very very strange evolution of "The Emperor's New Groove". I'd heard about it, I'd read about it, and I was pretty sure I'd never get to see it. I think the film was screened in two, if even that, film festivals years ago and hasn't resurfaced in any meaningful way since, most likely because Disney owns the rights to the documentary and the executives did not enjoy the way they were portrayed in it.
Well it appears as though by some completely random chance, an early cut of "The Sweatbox" surfaced in various places online. I learned about this while reading an animation thread on a certain website last Thursday. "Screw you, original afternoon plans," I said and dropped everything to watch the workprint immediately.
I was actually afraid that it would be taken down as I was watching, so I didn't want to risk waiting. It has since been deleted from YouTube, but the Internet never forgets and there's a very slight chance that it's still available somewhere out there. It was well worth a look just to satisfy my curiosity about the thing.
Now a very, very small portion of the film was posted over the summer and is still available (see above). It actually gives you an excellent idea of the documentary as a whole. First of all, it's not at all the muckraking clusterf*** I was led to expect after all these years. As a matter of fact, it's actually very sympathetic towards the film crew. If there was more aggressive dissent between the film crew and the executives, it's not onscreen. Heck, the executives don't even come across as that bad; they really only just admit that the original version of the film isn't working. There's not a lot of screaming and swearing, but there's a lot of shrugging and statements of "Oh well, them's the breaks."
The story is, naturally, mostly told from Sting's point of view and therefore covers how he and the other musicians and composers had to radically alter the film's music as it went under several dramatic tonal changes. I hate to say it, but this part of the story was by far the least interesting. We do get to see a lot of the animation art from "Kingdom of the Sun," the movie that mutated into "Emperor." This includes the brilliant Yzma villain song posted above and an animatic for another completely deleted song. Mostly there's storyboards, animatics, story sequences that were completely cut, and early character designs. These last two things are especially fascinating, and I really wish that much more time was spent on them.
We learn that Pacha was originally a completely different character, much younger and voiced by Owen Wilson. He would have been involved in a sort of "Prince and the Pauper" subplot, switching places with the transformed Emperor... Manco (stop laughing, Japan). There was a very very strange little character essentially in Kronk's role; a talking Olmec statue who sang a song about why humans can't be more like rocks. Yeah. And there was a princess character(?!?) who falls for Pacha(!?!?!) and sings the aforementioned deleted love song with him(?!?!?!?) while he is taking the Emperor's place.
Now it turns out that the tone of "Kingdom" wasn't as dreadfully serious as I'd been led to believe. It looks like the film had two very different supervisors, one of whom wanted a serious big damn epic, and the other wanted more humor. Eventually the humorous director got to take over the project entirely, and we got "The Emperor's New Groove". Sting was called -while on tour, which was just a little bit problematic for him- to write new songs for the new version of the film and from what "The Sweatbox" shows us, these are essentially the ones we hear in the final film. Yes, including "My Funny Friend and Me", which I always assumed was a holdover from "Kingdom of the Sun" and seems to come from yet another completely different film entirely. The sadder story is that of Andreas Deja, who is interviewed twice (*sigh*, only twice): once as he is working on the earlier version of Yzma and again after he's essentially dropped from the project.
Hanging over the documentary is, of course, the fact that "Emperor's New Groove" actually did eventually get made and released (with a lot of the discarded songs on the soundtrack yet), and is, especially given it's strange history, really good. So while "The Sweatbox" isn't like the "Lost in LaMancha" of animation, it's an entertaining look behind the scenes of an animated film, which is a rare treat indeed. I still wish Disney would let it be officially released so that more fans could finally satisfy their curiosity about it.
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Sketch of the Day!
Some of these character designs might have been for the project I had to put on hold when I heard I could finally watch "The Sweatbox":
* - First and by far the most interesting one this time: remember The New Dinosaurs? Remember The Humongous Book of Dinosaurs? (Really, who could forget either of them?) Did you know that strange, alternate art of the creatures from New Dinosaurs made an appearance in an issue of the magazine that was edited together to make The Humongous Book? Marc from Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs has the details and, thankfully, lots of pictures.
* - Speaking of science fiction creatures, Topless Robot did a tribute to Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials.
* - There are a lot of takeoffs on "Pokemon" her in the vast sea of the Internet, but one of the most adorable is Becky Dreistadt's Capture Creatures. These characters eventually have to appear in a real game because I want Tumblehop in my team NOW!!!
* - Everything is Terrible has recently reminded us that, long before there was "Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark", there was the fever-dream-esque 70's "Superman" musical.
* - Awful Library Books just dug up an unsettling little tome for kids that I guess is supposed to teach children about appropriate behavior in class but...?
* - These trailers for the upcoming "How to Train Your Dragon" series make me wonder if the series is going to feel a little like the first season of "Pokemon", showcasing a new creature every episode.
* - /Film also shared an excerpt from the very interesting-looking upcoming book, Tales From Development Hell. Darren Aronofsky's take on the film that eventually became "Batman Begins" would have been... different.
* - Remember Life Before the Dinosaurs, the blog founded by an eight-year-old with a love of Paleozoic critters? Well, he's currently in the middle of a long trip report about his visit to the Field Museum. I'll admit a twinge of jealousy.
* - A while back, toy designer Jason Geyer shared some concept art for "Star Wars" merchandise that never made it past the drawing board. Well, now he's sharing more. Check out their interpretations of certain characters before anyone knew what they looked like (oh wow, JarJar's dreadlocks... Speaking of, all the while you are reading this feature, keep in mind that this fantastically ill-conceived JarJar Binks lollipop did make it past the drawing board.)
* - And finally, Andreas Deja shared a wonderful piece of animation history: a recruitment brochure for Disney Animation, circa the late 1970's. The coolest part of it is all the early concept art I've never seen before. (And yet another tragic case of What Could Have Been for "The Black Cauldron": Caw could have been in the movie. I'll be over here, sobbing quietly.)
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Sketch of the Day! As it happens, inspired by one of the above links:
So apparently Robert Clampett of all people (and as an aside, I have not shown enough love to him on this blog which is downright embarrassing) approached Edgar Rice Burroughs in the 1930's to make an animated feature film based off of A Princess of Mars. Who knew?
The very little finished animation is beautiful, very Un-Clampettarian, and unlike anything from the same time period. In a weird way, it reminds me of the awesome and very strange Gene Deitch "Hobbit" animatic that resurfaced recently, in that it's a damn shame that neither of them ever became even a full short film.
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Sketch of the Day!
Have a Tyrannosaurus.
With that headline and perhaps with what you can discern of my mood lately, I'm guessing it's pretty transparent that some stuff happened recently in real life that made it hard for me to keep on top of things in the wider pop culture world. I... might explain what's going on later or I might not; right now, it's too soon.
Anyway, here is something the rest of the animation blogosphere is already over:
Mad props if you can recognize all the characters. "Gotham High" was a show that was being developed by the comic book artist/author team Celeste Green and Jeffrey Thomas. The whole thing was prompted by a piece of art they had made and sent in to DC. You can see it and the other concept art for the series on their blog.
So as far as anyone knows, this was not the "make us a cartoon about Batman in high school to appeal to the young parsons!" series that, through clever interpretation, eventually became "Batman: Beyond". It's a more recent proposal that was lost in the great sea of Batman-related animation projects pitched in-between the two (thus far) Christopher Nolan (hold that thought) films. It was rejected and it isn't happening. I think the "this is a secret test" theory over at Topless Robot is intriguing, though a little unlikely. The whole thing was probably going to be in the vein of the dearly missed "Clone High".
This is, if it were actually happening, a fine example of the crazy and stupid stuff Warner Bros. likes to do with it's characters now (let's not bring THAT series up again). But with the "This is not actually going to happen" safety net securely beneath us, I have to say that, surprisingly enough... I don't hate this. Which is to say, I think the concept art and character designs look really, really good. Clayface leaves me a tad confused, but every other character design choice is pretty clever.
I am glad this isn't happening, don't get me wrong. Now, have you heard of that crazy Spider-Man musical?
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Been surprisingly disciplined in adding new reviews to the Realm of Mad-Ness. The latest is of a kid's movie that will scar children for life. Actually, that describes most of the kid's movies I review. Huh.
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Sketch of the Day!
Yeah... I still kinda feel like this.
Well, first of all, holy mythology episode, Batman!
As we all know, it takes a very, very long time to make an animated feature film. With that in mind, it isn't all that surprising that many of the films in the Disney Animated Canon were significantly different during the various stages of their production. Other Disney movies never even saw the light of day. Recently, I read (but did not remember to take pictures of) two very different books about this very subject. Both of them were interesting reads, but varied a great deal in content.
Mouse Under Glass by David Koenig, 1997 - Billed as the hidden stories behind Disney movies and theme parks, this is a very quick read. I polished most of it off while waiting in this line:
I don't think I mentioned this before, but there was a very impressive line for Boston Comicon. That's new...
There are no Disney illustrations in this book; the few illustrations are from the literary source materials for the movies. Each chapter covers a different movie in the Canon. A lot of the stories are fairly well-known (and you can find many of them here). There are some cool stories about the controversies over certain Disney movies, but nothing particularly shocking (and you've already read about most of them at Snopes or the aforementioned TV Tropes.) What's most puzzling about this book are it's omissions. "The Black Cauldron" gets a lot of mentions - but, of all movies, it's one of the few features that doesn't get it's own chapter! It's a very strange oversight among several. Also, I think I'm going to be taking some of the trivia in this book with a grain of salt the size of my head, thanks to things like this. Spot the surprisingly common mistake, kids:
The Disney That Never Was by Charles Solomon, 1995 - Actually, I read this book before I read Mouse Under Glass, which turned out to be a mistake as this book put the other one to shame. There are TONS of artwork, salvaged from the Disney Vault and shown to us unwashed fans for the first time. Most of the never-finished films are actually shorts, and altogether not all that interesting. However, there is also a great deal of information about unfinished full-length films like "Chanticleer", "Gremlins", the original "The Little Mermaid" and the "Hans Christian Anderson" anthology film, and all the stalled "Fantasia" sequels.
It should be noted that both of these books made me appreciate "Fantasia" much more. Walt Disney was essentially the James Cameron of his day, making a movie with technology that he had to invent as he went along. Some of his plans for the first "Fantasia" were almost insane. "Odorama" (scents -including real gunpowder- filtered into the theater during key scenes) before there was a word for it. Three screens stitched together for a sort-of Cinerama effect (you can sort of get what Disney was going for by watching the very nice "Impressions De France" film in EPCOT.) And a sort of primitive version of the infamous (and failed) "hologram" skeleton idea kicked around during the production of "Black Cauldron", where the magic brooms in "Sorcerer's Apprentice" would march along the walls of the theater. The whole point of "Fantasia", even as it is today without any of the aforementioned effects, was essentially Disney and his animators getting to say, "Look at what we can do!" Therefore, the many planned periodic "Fantasia" movies (of which we got... one) would have been the animators saying, "Look at what we can do NOW!"
The lack of periodic "Fantasias" may be the single most haunting Disney could-have-beens of all. Think about it. They could have altered the history of American animation!
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Phylo (the game formally known as Phylomon) got a mention on GeekDad last week! My little House Sparrow was picked as one of the accompanying illustrations! More exposure, yaaaaaay!!!
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Dammit, Blue Sky, I thought you were different! :(
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Sketch of the Day!
I have to counter the Worst Thing I Have Drawn Recently (see the previous post) with the BEST Thing I Have Drawn Recently. As always, click to see the big version:
