John K. is posting his layouts from the unmade Ren & Stimpy epic The Wilderness Adventure, to illustrate his process of ‘maintaining guts’ of the storyboard. So I thought this would be an opportune time to share the whole unmade journey in board form. (I’m missing page 89, unfortunately, but there’s no loss of continuity).
As he writes, this was boarded in the Summer of 1990, before production on the series started. It looks to be primarily the work of John K. and Jim Smith, but there’s definitely a lot of Bob Camp in it and some Lynne Naylor too. Though it was rejected three times as is, a lot of the material found life in other cartoons, Man’s Best Friend most notably. The mosquito scene was used in The Great Outdoors – in fact, the board for that cartoon uses the exact same drawings as seen here. There was talk of using it to start off or be part of that fascinating fiasco, Adult Party Cartoon, but it never materialized.
Aside from the incredibly appealing drawing and staging, there’s a beautiful dynamic between George Liquor and his pets, only making me wish there were slews of R&S cartoons like it. ome of this material is funnier than much of what actually made it into that historic cartoon series. Maybe a naked fight between G.L. and a bear or Ren leaving his master to die seemed a little raw, but there’s at least that wonderful reassurance that this is just a cartoon and none of this is real – hell, the stuffed heads are revealed to still be living animals.
See I don’t lament the fact this cartoon never saw the light of day. While I adore Man’s Best Friend I think the whole “Ren and Stimpy stand around and listen to George talk” is something I can’t imagine sustaining many cartoons.
That would have been an awesome cartoon.
Mike: Ren and Stimpy do not merely stand around. They react ,often in fear, of George Liquor. That is what made Man’s Best Friend so great and given the strength of Spumco at the time, I would have loved to have seen the finished product.
And Dog Show wasn’t too bad either.
Eh, I dunno. Based on the storyboards this one looks like it would have taken forever to actually get going. To me it just doesn’t really stand out the way Man’s Best Friend does. Might have ended up decent with good animation and Nick-imposed tightening, but I guess we’ll never know.
Yeah Mike, I would have liked to have seen the final result. And judging by the layouts, it looks like the cartoon was probably going to be revived for Adult Party Cartoon. I don’t think it would have been so good at that time.
There’s nothing funny about Ren & Stimpy. Good drawing, good music, good in a technical sense, but that’s it.
Damn, Jorge, you are hardcore!
The original R&S was funny because the situations and reactions came out of the characters’ personalities. Unfortunately, what the execs at Nick and elsewhere mainly got out of it was “Damn! Why weren’t we doing fart, poop and piss jokes years ago?” And unfortunatelier, that also seemed to be the message John K got out of it when he made Adult Party Cartoon.
It’s amazing how much shit John got when the show first start considering how disgusting and depraved some of the later episodes were.
WOW!!! I’m surprised at the lack of enthusiasm over these… I think they’re wonderful! Thanks for sharing, this is a real gem! Those drawings of the duck…it’s like breathing in life and appeal. Thanks!
The bear that appears starting at page 66 also appears in the Spumco/Games ep “No Pants Today”, with almost exactly the same design.
One old magazine lamented the fact that Games had lefted the bear from an unrelated John K. project and stuck him in NPT. This must have been it.