Foodfight! Various early animated scenes

Ziggy
Ziggy
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Published 2024-05-02
Between 2000-2002, Threshold Digital Research Labs produced 7 minutes of animation for their feature film Foodfight! to show to potential investors and the press. This reel was animated with key frames in LightWave and directed by Jim George and George Johnsen. While the reel still remains missing, this is most of what was in it.

Not all the audio is accurate, some of it has lines dubbed over it from the table read audio on the workprint. But you can hear the original dubbing underneath their lines at certain points. (Mostly noticeable with Daredevil Dan.)

There's a few scenes tacked at the end because I felt they were too short to put in order without being jarring. Was mainly just wanting to upload this so they're up anyway. There's a few extremely short clips I forgot to add, which can be seen in the behind the scenes video and the Q-tip tests, but this is 95% of what I've found.
All Comments (21)
  • @ZiggyCashmere
    No, the movie was not stolen or deleted in 2002. No, there is no movie that was lost that still needs to be found. They only had about 7 minutes of animation completed before it was scrapped and rehauled entirely around late 2004. There are reports of the FBI investigating a "break-in" in late 2002, however whatever was reported to be stolen wasn't actually gone. The same animation would keep being shown to investors even as late as 2005 and every model was still in the servers around that time as well. Nothing ever actually went missing, they still had everything even by the very end. Confused? Watch the documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgBO9c3WKII
  • @jupiter9099
    It's incredible how overnight this film went from just an expensive mess to a misdirected tragedy.
  • @fancy-payne
    Imagine how different would have been if Larry hired an actual animation director to make this.
  • @DaimosZ
    4:23 There's something hysterical about how the big reveal of Dex's club is accompanied by a song roasting him for failing his past job as a detective. Way to rub it in lmfao.
  • @CandiTheWildPig
    It’s so surreal to see constantly switching from human to dog.
  • @Sliver-Animations
    Maybe in a alternate timeline food fight could’ve Been like hoodwinked,where it’s a solid film despite its questionable animation,but as it stands,these clips are better then the actual food fight film itself
  • @loudris442
    5:50 Overworked Threshold employee when Larry tells them to scrap already finished animation to make it "10% more awesome"
  • @IREV00
    2:34 This sequence is genuinely really great. Animation has actual weight to it and it manages to make the scene feel intense while still being funny.
  • @user-cx6lq8mt5g
    It definitely has that awkward late 90s/early 2000s animation that looks more like a video game cutscene. It’s still better than the final product though as at least the characters actually have facial expressions and move like people. If this movie came out back in 2002, I think it would have gained a cult following and be remembered as a nostalgic fever dream by gen Z.
  • @grogg4372
    05:50 this man's random mic peak is the funniest fucking thing oh my God
  • @tonymata8070
    I’m deeply disappointed and frustrated at Lawrence Kasanoff (the director of Foodfight), this original version looked infinitely better than the disastrous version that we eventually got. For the animation being aged, it had a lot of life and it was very cartoony like something out of Looney Tunes and Tex Avery. When I heard that this version was supposedly stolen in a “act of corporate espionage,” I instantly called bullshit on those claims. I think he was disappointed with the animation and scrapped the footage himself, and then he forced the animation team to go full motion capture. This guy doesn’t understand squat about motion capture, especially when it was in the 90s and 2000s. The whole process was very complex and very intricate to pull off, and that goes for early CG shows that did it like that like for example Donkey Kong Country. I’m glad that the internet has made a complete mockery out of him for his mishandling of his “magnum opus,” and he deserves every single insult thrown at him.
  • @toon4thought
    3:50 - So THAT'S where the crew member grabbed the shot for their portfolio!
  • @JJ_R
    4:24 I’m not ashamed to admit that this is kind of a bop.
  • @saraschmidt5612
    Still have no idea why they ditched this and went with the soulless motion capture instead. These early scenes actually look pretty impressive for the time. Love the squish and stretch style.
  • @Brainulator9
    It's nice hearing more of the Copabanana song parody.