Disney’s 1983, CGI test for “Where the Wild Things Are”

By Queuebot in Comics & Cartoons on Jul 15, 2009 at 8:09 pm

In 1983, future Pixar boss John Lasseter was a young animator working for Disney when he co-directed a test clip featuring a traditionally animated Max (the lead character from Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are,) running through a 3D house that was created with CGI that was then cutting-edge. The studio rejected the technique for being too expensive… and fired Lasseter soon after!

Link

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by gregs.

Tags: disney, Lasseter, Sendak, Wild Things

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Peachi
Jul 15th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Very impressive for the time and very interesting to see how things have evolved.
Skipweasel
Jul 16th, 2009 at 2:38 am
I’m not sure about this trend for making films of childhood books – I suppose I could just not go to see them! Sometimes you have such a strong internal visualisation that seeing someone else’s interpretation of it is rather – intrusive perhaps is the word.

This example – Max looks far too cute. I know it was only a test, but in the original he’s a cross little boy, not a little sweetie.
gregs
Jul 16th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Skipweasel, bear in mind that this is a test from 1983, so this film version of “Where the Wild Things Are” was never completed. The film version Spike Jonze is making could be terrible, but from what I’ve seen it’s clear he really respects the book. That’s a lot more than you could say of the directors of movies like the Mike Myers version of Cat in the Hat.
Leela
Jul 16th, 2009 at 4:13 am
Firefox can’t open the link!?
Skipweasel
Jul 16th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Cat in the Hat was utterly odious. Probably the worst children’s film I have ever seen. We had a copy here, once – the kids discarded it.
automatic
Jul 16th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Leela, FF opened it for me.
renderanything
Jul 16th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
FF opened for me too.
I never knew that Mr. Lasseter had directed this during his time at Disney. Interesting bit of history.

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