Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. The geek side of the internet is blowing up this morning talking about these proof of concept illustrations for a proposed (and shot down) Jurassic Park network cartoon revealed by the great William Stout.
It's easy to acknowledge just how big of a cultural impact Jurassic Park had on the world intellectually, but many of you younger folks weren't around to experience it firsthand. It was everywhere. Crichton's book cover was plastered in every bookstore window, comics and trading cards had prominent placement at comic stores, the pinball machine was in every arcade, John Williams' score was played on the radio and at every mall in the country, merchandising was in every store, McDonalds changed their menu and “Dino-sizing” your meal was the precursor to “Super-size.”
I was 12 the summer JP came out and that movie just took over. It was on the grown up boring news and was as big the entire summer as it was opening weekend.
It's actually surprising this cartoon never happened. William Stout talked a little about it on his site and apparently the concept was to do a cartoon that skewed a little more adult, like the movie, and was going to be executed with a combination of traditional animation and CG. That probably would have looked horrendous, but Stout says everything was in place and just required Spielberg's sign-off on it... which never came.
So, the show never happened, but Stout is now selling his artwork for a pretty reasonable sum. He's selling it piece by piece, ranging from $600 to $1250. If someone wants to buy me the Timmy one I'll give it a good home! If you like what you see and have a little extra money burning a hole in your pocket, make sure to head on over and buy one or two or all!
So, here you go... a look at what could have been:
I love that his take feels a little Jonny Quest-ish. Would have been fascinating if they had actually done it, but now we have a little more imagination fuel to add to the fire, no?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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