Back when the original Jurassic Park came out, all sorts of spin-off projects were in development. One of them was an animated series that artist William Stout did some early concept art for. Unlike the sequels we eventually got, the cartoon brought back everyone from Jurassic Park.
On his blog, Stout explained how the project was born and how it died:
Towards the end of all of this merchandising I got a call from artist Will Meugniot, asking if I’d be interested in designing a Jurassic Park animated series. This was not going to be a kiddy show (although kids of all ages, including myself, could enjoy it). 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.
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 Spielberg’s approval.
I heard through the grapevine that he never bothered to watch what we had done. By that time the word was out that he was burnt out on Jurassic Park merchandising and all of the film’s commercial exploitation. So, it never got made.
Now, Stout is selling the Jurassic Park concept art on his site, which means we can see how Dr. Ellie Satler et al. would have looked:
See the rest of the art on Stout’s website.
[From Director Steven Spielberg via Collider]
Contact the author at katharine@io9.com.