For and made by @Uli Meyer
Original uploaded: Tuesday, August 22, 2017 at 9:12 AM EST via Parallel Uploader at Vimeo.
In the summer of 1995 I was invited by Steve Leiva to fly to LA from London to talk about contracting work on a film called Space Jam. What was meant to be a one week stay, turned into several months. In the meantime, back in London we hired 110 artists to prepare for a one year animation schedule. Back in LA more artists arrived and we began work on developing "Space Jam". Its star Michael Jordan had a short window in his busy schedule and the pressure was on everybody to cobble together a movie featuring Jordan and basketball playing Looney Tunes. The plot also called for various new characters and everybody chipped in with designs.
Producer Ivan Reitman had a large room in his production office building on the Universal lot where drawings were pinned up on endless rows of boards. The villain of the story was called 'Swackhammer' and since drawing villains is most fun, there were many great designs to pick from. Reitman and director Joe Pytka narrowed them down to a few and one of mine was favoured. But as is customary in Hollywood film making, nobody would make a final decision. The animation period of the production was approaching fast and model sheets had to be drawn. I figured that if the big wigs could see the design actually moving and talking, it would be easier to sign it off. I picked a bit of voice track of Jack Palance and animated a few seconds of my design. This was presented and Swackhammer was born. We subsequently dropped the Victorian garb and put him in a suit and Birkenstocks and Danny DeVito provided the voice.
I always wondered what happened to the test until I recently found an old 35 mm film can in my cupboard. In it was a short roll of film marked ' Swackhammer test. Thanks to Roger Harlow and his team from Cinelabs near Slough, UK, I can share this long lost piece of animation trivia with you.
Ещё видео!