By Travis Johnson
Well, this is incredibly cool.
Back in the day, Lucasfilm commissioned artist Patrick Schoenmaker to create a print of a cartoon-looking Indiana Jones as part of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull marketing push. While the film is less than loved, the resulting print, “Escaping the Tomb”, is fantastic – that’s it at the top of the article, and you can still buy it here.
Now, while Lucasfilm had no interest of pursuing an animated take on the adventures of Henry Jones, Jr., Schoenmaker couldn’t get the idea out of his head, and has spent the last five years beavering away, on his own dime, to create his own, not-for-profit, short animated Indy fan film. Today, with the following image, he announced its online release date:
Goosebumps.
Schoenmaker is a prodigiously talented artist, and if Disney, who now own the rights to Indiana Jones after their purchase of Lucasfilm, aren’t completely insane they’ll be considering this rather bold calling card quite seriously. A full, rollicking, high adventures Indiana Jones animated series, with all the animating power that the Mouse House can bring to bear, would be a thing of rare beauty. In the meantime, check out Schoenmaker’s site, circle September 29 on your calendar, and check out some of the other Indy images the artist has released over the life of the project:
This is fantastic and should have been done so much sooner
Unfortunately, action/dramatic animation is not desired by the cartoon media outlets. Their accountants do not feel that the ratings or toy sales justify the expense when comedy animation is much cheaper and yields toy sales.
I think you might be thinking of a different cartoon media outlet… Disney is currently producing a half-dozen action oriented shows, more, if you count hybrid shows like Star Vs the Forces of Evil.