Illustrator William Stout recently dropped a ton of never-before-seen concept art on his website for a proposed Jurassic Park cartoon that was in development during the '90s. Work on the show began after the triumphant success of the original 1993 film, and intended to carry on the story of the surviving characters.
"This was not going to be a kiddy show (although kids of all ages, including myself, could enjoy it)," he writes on his blog. "They wanted the show to be a mature prime time series with top writers and state-of-the-art television animation augmented with quite a bit of CG animation. Universal Cartoon Studios wanted a 'graphic novel look' to the series. I came in, showed my portfolio and was hired."
If you head over to his site you can scroll through a gallery of work that features eight character profiles, and a handful of set-piece ideas. Interesting to see the Mosasaur make an early appearance here, too, which makes what he reveals next all the more interesting:
"We made a trailer to communicate the look and feel of the series, also showing how we would combine computer animation with traditional animation. All we needed was [Steven] Spielberg's approval."
As he goes on to explain, Spielberg nixed the idea, with Stout suggesting the director's weariness over the excessive merchandising played a role. Still, now with word out on the series, Stout sharing his unused work on his site, and Jurassic World having made all of the money in the world, can we at least see the trailer?
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