Many of the most-fun projects I work on never actually get made, like this one for example, a very fun project directed by Phil Robinson at Wild Brain in San Francisco.
These sketches were done for a re-telling of all the classic FAIRY TALES where the BIG BAD WOLF is the baddie, BUT this time told from his point of view. We learn that he was set-up in the LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD story, and RED was actually his girlfriend. The poor wolf is framed by the 3 LITTLE PIGS, who were 3 horrible little THUGS in our version. It was funny.
We were having a lot of fun developing this idea but the needle-scratch moment came when we found out that a film called HOODWINKED was already in production elsewhere. Clearly our timing was bad and therefore the project was shelved.
Rip-snorter drawings Jimmy!
Thank you, Sarah! they were fun to do. I have some more drawings of other characters from the same project that I will post later.
I always really liked the guy in the middle. He reminds me of an Oliver Twist villain! Scary!
You got it! That was the direction we were heading in.
I do recognize these characters from your portfolio when you shared it with me back then. Really cool! I especially like the sketch on the top where everyone one got really high-rise pants!
Too bad that a bunch of fairy tales with smart pants jumped on and killed the genre afterward…
Pat, yeah, there was a period of about 6 years in my career where EVERYTHING I worked on got cancelled. And they were all exciting projects too. But I had fun and met some great people during that period, including YOU!
There’s still room for a Dickensian style project in animation with animals!
hmmmm… LET’S DO IT!
What did the wolf look like?
The WOLF is here:
https://www.James-Baker.com/images/group.jpg
and
https://www.James-Baker.com/images/wolf.jpg
LITTLE RED RIDIING HOOD is here:
https://www.James-Baker.com/images/red.jpg
GRANDMA is here:
https://www.James-Baker.com/images/granny.jpg
BOSS PIG is here:
https://www.James-Baker.com/images/warthog_color.jpg
You can find other such designs in my FOLIO