So Warner Bros. has commissioned C. H. Greenblatt (Chowder, Harvey Beaks) to develop a little something for HBO Max that has Yogi, Magilla Gorilla, Huckleberry Hound, and friends in a small town called---wait for it----Jellystone. Yeah, it ain't just a park anymore, peeps, but a whole town.
WB caught some flak for the designs for Be Cool, Scooby-Doo because the creators on that series took their cues from Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy, or so it seemed. As a result, Be Cool was cancelled after 2 seasons at Chumptoon Network.
The character illustrations shown above look even worse than Be Cool. Why they couldn't stick with the classic designs, as they're doing with Looney Tunes Cartoons, I don't know. What I do know is that WB is giving lip service to fans of Yogi, Magilla, Captain Caveman, etc., who've been waiting for those characters to be given a 21st century revival. I guess they had to wait until the now-defunct [adult swim] series, Harvey Birdman, Attorney-at-Law, had been off the air long enough to create room for fresh ideas or something.
And people complained about the CGI-driven "Yogi Bear" with Dan Aykroyd & Justin Timberlake voicing Yogi & Boo Boo nearly a decade ago. Trust me, they're going to be baying at the moon over this. Stay tuned.
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Well, Jellowstone isn't a new Yogi Bear show, per se, anymore than Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. is a Mario game. Jellystone is more of a "potpourri" show with a host of Hanna-Barbera's funny animal characters from the 60s to the 80s, and Captain Caveman.
Just like with Warner Brothers' recent Flintstones series Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs (which debuted on Boomerang UK back in February) I really don't get why WB is so keen on going with non-traditional character designs. These Jellystone designs look even more off-model than the ones on YDD. Yogi, Huckleberry and the gang all look like their brain dead! If the original designs were more detailed and they needed to be simplified for more slapstick gags, then I could understand, but there was nothing wrong with the original designs, at all. As the expression goes: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
We gave our initial impressions of Jellystone! on our blog back in February. No clips have been released yet, as far as I know. No premiere date for the series has been announced yet either.
As ye scribe noted in our Peeks (first impressions) of Jellystone!, the concept behind the show sounds like it could be fun (sort of a better, less cynically and creatively bankrupt version of Yo, Yogi!), I enjoyed moments of C.H. Greenblatt's Chowder and I'm definitely intrigued by Greenblatt's stating how he's planning to dig deep into the obscurity well for characters and callbacks (I saw a sketch of Ruff of Ruff & Reddy fame, now that's going back!), so I'm definitely on board with that, as many of these characters are longing for some love from their producers, but I'm REALLY not digging these designs. In a word, Yuck! Much of the cast looks extremely dopey and/or stoned out of their minds, and the artwork I've seen so far is inexcusably doodley and amateurish to be coming from a multi-million dollar studio and animation industry pros.
Compare this to Pete Browngardt's Looney Tunes Cartoons, in which the artists meticulously tried to replicate a classic, timeless look and feel, and it puts these doodles to shame. Like mi hermano Goldstar opined, why WB can't just go with more traditional designs but with more fluid movement and a sense of weight, light and shadows is beyond me. Here's hoping that Greenblatt and crew are busy touching up these designs by the time the show arrives on HBO Max. Judging by this, I'm almost scared to see what Tom & Jerry in the Big City (said to hitting Max sometime in 2021) is gonna look like.
Guys:
I'm just as concerned about Tom & Jerry in The Big City, and I've a bad feeling about this. The grade school level designs for Jellystone suggest they might be looking at repurposing this show on Chumptoon Network in order to do a virtual infomercial for HBO Max. Which might be the only thing that keeps CN/Boomerang running......
On a semi-related note, hobbyfan, do you think that Boomerang's streaming service and DC Universe/DC Kids will eventually be absorbed into HBO Max? Because I kind of feel like that's where this may be going.
Boomerang, probably. DCU? I doubt it.
And I thought the Cal Arts style was bad!
Someone really needs to find people who can draw classic characters better than a first grader!
Where are they getting these "artists" from? SOMEBODY is responsible for this!!
The CalArts style is actually reasonable compared to this drivel.
Funny how you're all judging C.H. Greenblatt's portrayal of the classic H-B characters before you get to see them in action. Paul Rudish's take on Mickey Mouse and friends tends to be weird as heck (at least in my opinion), yet folks took a pretty strong liking to it. We don't really know how this upcoming series will be animated, so we'll have to wait and see.
If you ask me, Jellystone sounds like a better name for an H-B character-populated place than Yabbadabbaville does (no offense, Xerus). Speaking of which, I'd recommend checking out Xerus's fan fiction series HB House on fanfiction.net if you want to get your fill on less inferior Hanna-Barbera content in the 21st century.
In defense of Rudish's take on Mickey Mouse, he at least remains faithful to the source material, as the producers of Looney Tunes Cartoons do. Greenblatt and his staff appear to be taking the short road to reinterpreting Yogi and his friends. We'll see when the final product emerges.
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