Harry here with quite a lengthy update from Mr Wimpy, who would gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today. Unfortunately he sent a large zip file of images from TARZAN allegedly in full color, but unfortunately, I couldn't get any of the files to open.... Sigh... Maybe later today I'll get it figured out. So until then just marvel at all the cool info this Mr Wimpy spills out...
I've never written to your site before, but I reckon I have a reason to now. Yesterday (Thursday 26th Nov) I was invited to The Disney Convention at The Plaza in Lower Regent St, London. There was a lot of boring product talk, and the big finalé was the chance to watch A Bug's Life ñonly a day after it debuted in the US. And I reckon it's one of the coolest films I've ever seen. The CG effects are the best I've ever seen by a long shot.
Anyway, you all know about A Bug's Life already. That's not why I'm writing. It's the stuff they showed before hand that I thought you'd want to hear about. A man called David Stainton, Senior Vice President of Creative Affairs came on and talked about Disney's animated line-up right until 2001. I'll try and tell it how it was:
TREASURE PLANET
He started by showing the logo for this film. It's based on Treasure Island, but set in space. Basically he said the premise behind it was that Disney have never done an animated feature set in space. And the question was "What could we do that hasn't been done with SFX in live action movies?" The answer from their animation studios was "Loads". He mentioned visually playing with some of the concepts of space and time, showing incredible visions of alien worlds and otherworldly life. And also adapting characters like Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins to the theme. There was also artwork with these characters' silhouettes set against a volcanic planet's cracking surface. This one is set for Xmas 2000.
ATLANTIS
Just a logo. Set in the past this one. For some weird reason I can't remember anything about this one.
TOY STORY 2
Which comes out next autumn. They actually showed a pre-production trailer for this, set to the Mission Impossible tune. It had all the old characters including a new edition Buzz Lightyear toy talking to old Buzz. Old Buzz was telling the new Buzz that he was just a toy, and the new one was saying "Have you been brainwashed or something?" They're tracking down Woody who's been stolen by a toy collector. It looked as good as the first one, but the coolest thing was that the trailer was so early it had an animation frame counter running along the bottom and you could see all the files names and development info appearing in the corners. It was like watching a pre-prod video game running!
FANTASIA 2000
The first time this stuff has been seen outside Disney's LA studio. I can't believe how much of this they showed! I saw three of the nine musical sets from the movie. Like the first film, each one uses a different cartoon style, and is set to orchestral music. They also talked about the revamp of the old Sorceror's Apprentice, Mickey's first new animation in five years. This is set to be shown in New York around Xmas (complete with a live philarmonic orchestra) then it's touring to London (Royal Albert Hall) then back for an LA premiere on the Dec 31st!
Anway, the first piece they showed starred Donald Duck. It was the tale of Noah's Ark. Forgive my lack of classical music knowledge ñI can hum the tune but I don't know its name. It's a very famous one with a British WW2 sound to it. Anyway it looks like the classic Disney art style (like Sorceror's Apprentice) and starts with all the animals summoned to the Ark. Much like the opening to Lion King. The Ark is massive and viewed like the crashed alien ship from Alien. Noah then drags his serf, Donald, out of his hut, to tick off the animals as they arrive. Naturally he and Daisy are the two ducks that have to board. But he misses seeing her enter and rushes out to look for her... as the tidal wave arrives. She thinks Donald is drowned, but he's actually washed on board. And much cross-wires shenanigans ensue. There's lots of 'funny' site gags ñ ship tilting and almost sliding elephant onto Donald, then tilting other way to save him... then tilting back and 20 massive creatures squash him. Ho ho. It starts off quite cheesy but actually looked pretty good.
The second scene was Stravinsky's Firebird. This one featured a deer watching a water nymph bringing life to trees and the ground until she reaches the base of a volcano. Inside the volcano is a strange rock with explodes into a giant fiery demon and starts destroying the volcano's surroundings as a massive lava tidal wave as it tries to catch the nymph.. It's very dramatic. Quite adult. And kind of like classic fantasy style art.
The last one they showed had a load of pink flamingos. And the concept of 'what would happen if one got hold of a yo-yo.' It's as dumb as it sounds and the kind of thing you'd expect from The New Pink Panther Show or something. The art looked quite tacky.
TARZAN
They showed two bits from this. One was the Phil Collins video and the other was a scene where Tarzan grows up. This was quite cool. Before hand, David Stainton talked about why Disney were doing the "second most filmed literary character after Dracula". Explaining that they could show more of Tarzan when he was young. And also portray him as having all the powers Edgar Rice Burrough's claimed he had ñ?strength of Silvermane, agility and flexibilty of a chimpanzee. It's impressive too. In the scene, Tarzan is trying to prove he's as good as any ape. And leaps around like Spiderman (only resting on his knuckles), and even surfing down vines. It was early footage and sometimes switched to animated line sketches. When Tarzan grows up, the child leaps into the sky and transforms instantly into adult Tarzan. The art style isn't at all classical as people have said. Tarzan really does look and move quirkily. His hands and feet are big and he has larger forearms than biceps. He's also very lean and his shoulder blades stick out when he moves. His expressions too are brilliantly wild-eyed and monkeyish. I reckon he's gonna be the weirdest Disney hero yet. No stupid square jaw. More like Howling Mad Murdoch.
DINOSAURS
This last one is the most awesome. I haven't read about this anywhere. It's coming out end of 2000. The film is set in the twilight of the dinosaurs, when the killer comet arrives, and deals with the legacy they leave for the emerging mammals. All the creatures are CG rendered onto real backgrounds, but the backdrops are also altered to look like prehistoric Earth. As it was described ñ? "Jurassic Park was bringing dinosaurs into our world, this is taking us into the world of Dinosaurs." Then they showed a trailer ñ?this was so early too, that it sometime switched to wireframes or pre-textured dinosaurs (but that just made it more exciting). It started with a brachiosaur raising his head from feeding to stare at the sky, as a comet broke the atmosphere. Then a hail of glowing comets starts blasting into the Earth as herds of dinosaurs rear up and charge into the screen. There's also some ace looking dino battles (classic T-Rex vs Triceratops style stuff) and Pteradactyls soaring through ocean canyons. There's only one dodgy element ñ?the dinos talk. For example, there's a herd of smaller T-Rex type dinos, and their 'seargant' is biting at their shins and gruffly telling them to move along. The early mammals too, look like squirrel monkeys, and talk like Planet Of The Ape chimps. Impressive CG fur though. Oh and there's one awesome bit with dinos splashing through prehistoric swamp water, and smaller dinos are skittering between their legs. It really does look fantastic and could be like an hour and a half of no-holds barred Jurassic Park T-Rex-style scenes. Or it could be like the Land That Time Forgot. Hope not, I'm a big dinosaur fan.
Mr Wimpy.
