Greetings from Palm Key my fellow Quest fans,Thanks for all the great comments and sharing since last I posted the MONSTER IN THE MONASTERY blog.
This may have to be just a quick one. My job is sending me away for several months and I will not be able to make any Quest entries until I return sometime in December, or even later.
But before I disappear for a while, several of you have alerted me to the coolest piece of Quest to hit the internets in a long, long time --and that is Roger Evan's incredible stop motion version of the Main Title of Jonny Quest.
Race Bannon lets go a round of fire in Roger Evan's kickass animated re-do of the Quest opening. This man painstakingly recreated each shot from the Main Title of the original 1963 sequence that started off each Quest episode.
It is terrific to see so many of these images recreated in 3D (or is it 2D?) and to seem them play to Hoyt Curtin's rollicking Main Title music.
Here are a few of the frames that Roger posted on his website where the process of creating this magnificent piece of animation is chronicled.
Roger's terrific recreation of Race swinging into some Lizard Men who have attacked Jonny. And if you haven't seen it, here is the link to where you can see the finished sequence in all it's glory:
http://vimeo.com/28278839
And don't forget to visit the links on that page to Roger's extensive chronicle of how this amazing piece of animation came to be. It is truly fascinating and a must-see for all classic Quest fans.
Roger is considering petitioning Warner Bros. (the current copyright holder to most of the Hanna-Barbera properties) to perhaps trying a feature in this style.
Amazing! The villians from Fraudulent Volcano, in their hover crafts. Seeing this shot come to life in more than one dimension is a real thrill.I have to admit, it sounds a whole world better than a live-action version of JONNY QUEST where Zac Effron and The Rock play Race and Jonny in what sounds more like a live-action version of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest and not the classic Quest that Doug Wildey, William Hanna and Joe Barbera brought to us in the 1960s.
A laser test in the Sargasso sea comes to vibrant life thanks to Roger and Co.'s terrific recreation of this classic Quest shot. Though my sources in the industry (given what they are) tell me that project has been shelved -- another victim of the economic conservatism that the studios are all adhering to these days. Most have cut their production slates by more than half for any given year now.
It didn't help that Warner Bros. lost millions with Speed Racer, The Watchmen and a handful of other very expensive vintage cartoon and/or comic book big screen incarnations.
For me, I think Jonny Quest dodged a bullet when Warners shelved its current version of Quest for the big screen.
OTHER QUEST BITS
Check out this little piece of vintage Quest heaven: A black and white promo for the premiere of The Addams Family series, whose debut was sponsoring (in part) the original broadcast of the Quest episode "Terror Island".
http://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/sagd0a
And I am not sure which of you asked for a particular piece of Hoyt's Quest music, but I think I found it and have uploaded it. I don't believe any previous blog has included this cue, so Curtin fans out there might want to download and add it to there collection as well.
It has been renamed, in lieu of whatever number the cue was labelled, as "The Ting Chase".
http://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/fzk5uo
QUEST ART
As always I want to share some Quest art gathered (and sometimes shared with me on rare delightful occasion) from around the web.
Not sure what the implications are here. Is Race caught being the world's worst babysitter? 
Hadji brings the brewskis in this wild take on the partying Quests 
Fantastic rendering of Benton and his bazooka from the Turu the Terrible episode. There are some wonderful artists out their in the vast cyber world, who do Quest artwork, something I love to share on this blog.
Artist Erin Morris who has done some wonderful Quest work that I have posted, even runs a Quest art group on line. An art group that has graciously given me permission to share their work here in this blog.
And I will be sharing a lot of that work in the blogs to come. Here is a sample:
Race and Dr. Quest have some sort of a domestic squabble apparently in this wonderfully stylized take on the boys. This scene must be from one of those rare lost or never aired episodes ;-).
And this terrific Terry and the Pirates style take on some classic Quest villians and fem fatales. And if you want to check out Erin's Quest art group yourself, check out the always dazzling Deviant Art website, and more specifically for Quest stuff, this link to the Quest group:
http://jonnyquestclub.deviantart.com/
FINALLY
As a parting gift before I vanish until possibly the new year, I get a lot of requests to please send people the entire Quest documentary complete.
So in response to several inquires as of late (you can contact me through the email address provided in my profile for this blog) I have uploaded the entire doc again -- all two hours, twenty-one minutes and forty-nine seconds of it.
But I have tried something different yet again, since Sendspace has now become a service that allows the uploading of larger files. I have uploaded the entire documentary in one big 857 mg file.I don't know how long it would take to download the file -- it's a big one -- and I guess a lot of it would depend on your internet connection etc. But here is the link:
http://www.sendspace.com/pro/nosgv5
It is my hope that in this very accessible and downloadable format, all of you who have had trouble in the past, trying to download pieces and joining them etc - can finally see the full project in one simple download.
So here again is the entire documentary as one large Quicktime movie file that you can download and play -- I recommend you play it on your free but terrific VLC Media player.
As I say readers and lurkers, this may well be the last entry I can make this year. In the meantime, please keep sharing artwork with me and other tidbits you may have on Quest, and when next I can, I will share them on the blog.
And if you download the doc, and choose to share it or burn to DVD and send it to friends, or whatever you chose to do with it, please remember a very simple request from the programs creators:
Again, I am not the author of this documentary, though many folks mistake me for the creators. They are in actuality, two gents and die-hard classic Quest fans who have asked to remain anonymous, but allowed me to post their work, first on YouTube (which censors several chapters that have clips from other TV shows in them) and then finally here in this blog.
It was created for a one-time screening at a 50th birthday party, if you can believe that. The documentary took over a year to research and create, so it was one hell of a birthday gift -- and is another testament to just how loved and memorable this show was and is to so many of us from that generation.
The only request they have about sharing the doc with other Quest fans, is that while they want it shared, they want no one, under any circumstances to copy it and then sell it to other parties.
They are offering it not only for the delight of other Quest fans like themselves, but in the spirit that generosity and sharing changes the complexion of the world, deed by little deed.
Best always,
Chris
