Six Definitive Films: The ultimate beginner’s guide to animation
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Credit: DreamWorks
Watch the strange original animation test for ‘Shrek’
With help from a contemporary revival fueled by meme culture, the classic DreamWorks animation Shrek has become one of the most beloved movies of modern cinema, despite there having not been a film released in the franchise for over a decade. The animated green ogre, voiced by Mike Myers, has become an icon of subversive humour in modern times, diverting from his rather ordinary identity back in the 2000s.
Whilst the first movie in the franchise was a considerable success upon its release in 2001, the subsequent installments in the series truly prompted the fandom, as characters like the Gingerbread Man, Lord Farquaad and Eddie Murphy’s Donkey became mainstays. With sequels released in 2004, 2007 and 2010, many fans have been surprised by the lack of franchise activity in recent years, considering the character’s mainstream resurgence.
The land of Shrek’s Far Far Away could have looked a lot different from the vibrant vista that we are gifted with throughout each of the four installments, however, with early concept art showing that initially, the films were set to be a lot darker.
Whilst Shrek is supposed to be an ugly character in the movies, it’s fair to say that he could look much worse. With podgy cheeks and a cheeky smile, we’re not surprised Princess Fiona fell for the ogre, but if he looked more like his original design, we wouldn’t be so sure that royalty would want anything to do with him.
Short, dirty and smeared with yellow grease, the original concept art made Shrek look like a product of a landfill site with none of the charm that the eventual DreamWorks character would possess. This design can be seen in a video posted to YouTube in August that claims to be early renderings from the 2001 movie, showing an animation test of Shrek in the middle of a grubby medieval town. Oh, and strangely it’s put to the tune of James Brown’s ‘I Feel Good’.
The words of Ruben Hickman, a concept artist who worked on Shrek, seem to confirm this footage to be true, with the behind-the-scenes creative revealing the secrets of the pre-production process to Motherboard.
Arriving on the first day, Hickman was shown the original designs for the film, recalling that he was told, “It’s going to look like this…much more underground comic, edgy, a lot darker. The color scheme was much more experimental. I realized I was in a tug of war immediately”. Producing a short film in the late 1990s, the dark art style of the original concept was hastily shut down by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO of DreamWorks, who reportedly hated Shrek’s early design.
Describing the short film, Hickman states, “A robber tries to rob Shrek…Shrek’s walking up to the castle, and a robber comes down a rope off the wall. I don’t remember the details. It looks utterly nothing like the movie”.
Take a look at the curious concept film for the original version of Shrek below.
