My special agent, Sparkplug the Hot Water Heater Robot, let loose with a ton of PLANET ICE revelations. Wow, sounds pretty damn cool. A cool american animated feature cartoon without songs!!! Wow, one can pray can't they? Also check out the evil prequel footage insinuation. ARGH!!! That hurts, don't it?
Sparkplug here, back from my visit to Fox Animation Studios. As I said before, I'd find whatever info I could, and I've done just that! It turns out, now that Anastasia is finished, they're gearing up to work on Planet Ice (people are already wearing nifty Planet Ice shirts!), which I remember was mentioned on AICN awhile before. Now, if the movie is as good as the pics I saw, than we are in for something REALLY cool! They were fairly secretive about the project, but I managed to get a look at some stuff from it. First off, I saw pictures of these ships, which I thought looked like a cross between those really nifty bomber ships from Starship Troopers and helicopters. They look fairly large, and have two big propellors on top of them placed above the wings. I saw another design of what looked like the same ship, with built in fan propellors in the wings. These things looked REALLY COOL!!! Next, I saw some character designs. These were fairly interesting. On a big board, they had full color designs, that looked like they were CGI rendered characters. The first, was of a pretty girl, with short black hair, who reminded me of the of the girl from Wizards. Then, there was a COOL looking reptilian creature. This guy, looked MEAN! His face had a pebbled texture, and the structure of the head kinda reminded me of those pictures of the new design for Godzilla. He also wore what looked like pretty banged up armor. There was more on this board, but I was unfortunately pushed along before I could get a good look at the rest. Hehe, I think they wanted to keep it secret ;) Next, I saw some neat landscape pics. The first, was a pencil sketch desert-looking landscape, with a tent blowing in the wind, with a big wheel off in the right hand corner. This was a great looking picture, kinda reminded me of Tatooine. The other one I saw, was a color picture of one of the helecopter ships, flying through a blue sky. Simple, but nifty. Next, I saw footage from it! Wasn't much, but better than nothing. Three guys were standing around a computer (They have them spread around the place) and watched a pencil test scene of a gangly alien guy, sitting in a chair (Looked sorta like the cockpit of a ship), when another alien guy walked in the doorway, and through something at his head.
Then he laughed, and walked away. It was sorta hard to make the scene out, but the aliens looked neat, and the ship had a cool, banged up look to it. I then saw some more character designs, these made with regular pencil and paper. The first, was of a young guy. He had the I'm-the-star look to him, and his design looked remenicent of an Elfquest character. He was also dressed in your basic post-apocolyptic-future attire. Then, I saw what looked liked either a soldier, or a general type character. He wore a berriet, and had a very stern look to him. His clothes were neat, and military looking. Overall, this project has cool written all over it.
However, if it doesn't have a good story to it, than this could be the best eye-candy movie to come along for awhile. Kinda reminds me of an animated Star Wars, especially with the technology, which has that neat "banged up" look to it. (Man 'o' man, I've said banged up a lot!) It should be out in a couple of years (Which is too long a wait in my opinion!). Now, for some interesting quickies. They said that they are also deciding on another project after Planet Ice, but they hadn't decided which yet. They were VERY secretive about this! But, I managed to watch an animator working on some sketches of a very biblical, Jesus looking character. When the guy saw me, he said "Sorry, can't look at this. Its double-secret" and promptly covered his work. Hmmmm...Could Fox be working on a religious epic to try and rival Prince of Egypt?? And now, for something HIGHLY interesting! We walked past a door that lead to a screening theater. Our guide (Really cool girl named Lucy Fur, she was a amazonian goddess if memory serves) said it was a "super theater" with mega sound and picture. She said that Fox let them see movies and test footage type stuff ahead of everyone. They saw Independence Day WAAAY ahead of everyone, and are going to have a final print Titanic any day now. But, then she said they were really excited though, because they heard through the grapevine, that they'd soon "...be getting some very special footage, of a movie that will be coming out in '99 that EVERYONE is going to go see." Could this "very special footage" be from EPISODE ONE?!?!
Now, I have my doubts that Lucas would let ANYONE see anything...BUT. She seemed VERY anxious about it. DAMN! To think that there is the SMALLEST chance that there might be footage from Epidsoe One in the same area as me, make me get goosebumps!!! I also noticed what looked to be a script for Planet Ice lying on a desk, but couldn't sneak a look at it! Inches away! DAMN!
Well, that pretty much wraps up the curious wonders I saw on my secret journey! Hope this sounds as good as it looked, and belive me it looked good! If theres anything you need looked into out here in Arizona, contact me and I'll be there! Till next time!
Sparkplug the Hot Water Heater Robot
