Never-before-published model sheets for canned Amblin Cats movie 🐈⬛✏️👁️
Hi all. As promised, I am sharing a comprehensive .PDF of model sheets that were created for the Amblimation Cats movie that never saw the light of day. Most of these model sheets have not been published or posted anywhere on the internet as far as I'm aware. I'm going to get ahead of some questions for the good of the order:
Are these real? I certainly didn't sit and create all 117 pages myself for the sake of an elaborate hoax!
How did you get these? I work in the animation industry. A senior coworker caught wind of my cats obsession and said he had the Xeroxes and asked if I wanted him to bring them in. Internally, I flipped my shit. And then I digitized his hard copies.
How did your coworker get these? They were found in the library of the university he used to go to. (Not super unusual at an arts school in southern California.) He made photo copies back then and has been holding onto them. The thing is he knows nothing about CATS; isn't a CATS fan, never seen it, etc. I guess he just felt it was something worth holding on to!
Can you upload better quality? Unfortunately what you're seeing as good as the quality gets. These are scans of photocopies from the 90s. There is nothing to be done for the crunchiness.
What about (missing characters)? I'm showing you everything I was personally given!
Which character is (nondescript drawing of a cat)? If the image isn't labeled, your guess is as good as mine! I put all the misc./unlabeled cats in the back of the PDF. The only exceptions are ones that I felt were abundantly obviously supposed to be a specific character.
Who are the artists? Unfortunately, there's no way I can tell for sure. None of the sheets are signed. I wouldn't even go about guessing because many concept artists can perfectly emulate more "well known" illustrators whose styles were sought after. My coworker said he might be able to figure out who the draftsmen were; until then it's a mystery! If I find out, I will come back to this post and update it with that information.
Are these all the model sheets ever? No! In fact, there are model sheets that have been posted online that are not in the bundle I was given. I have no idea of the sum total of model sheets in existence.
I'm back here on National Poetry Day to recommend my girlfriends amazing, heartwarming poetry collection, The Bindings. Poems about life, love, grief, triumph, and so much more by a Black woman with Cerebral Palsy.
You can purchase physical copies at the link below:
oh my goodness, one of dian fossey’s first close up observations with gorillas happened when she was trying to climb a tree to see them better, but so badly that by the time she’d gotten up the entire group had come out of hiding to look at her: “Nearly all members of the group had totally exposed themselves, forgetting about hiding coyly behind foliage screens because it was obvious to them that the observer had been distracted by tree-climbing problems, an activity they could understand.”
[Image transcript: porch. The group had been day-nesting and sunbathing when I contacted them, but upon my approach they nervously retreated to obscure themselves behind thick foliage. Frustrated but determined to see them better, I decided to climb a tree, not one of my better talents. The tree was particularly slithery and, try as I might, no amount of puffing, pulling, gripping, or clawing succeeded in getting me more than a few feet aboveground. Disgustedly, I was about to give up when Sanwekwe came to my aid by giving one mighty boost to my protruding rump; tears were running from his eyes as he was convulsed in silent laughter. I felt as inept as a baby taking its first step. Finally able to grab on to a conveniently placed branch, I hauled myself up into a respectful semislouch position in the tree about twenty feet from the ground. By this time I naturally assumed that the combined noises of panting, cursing, and branch-breaking made during the initial climbing attempts must have frightened the group on to the next mountain. I was amazed to look around and find that the entire group had returned and were sitting like front row spectators at a sideshow. All that was needed to make the image complete were a few gorilla-sized bags of popcorn and some cotton candy! This was the first live audience I had ever had in my life and certainly the least expected.]
imagine some freakish not-a-human alien THING has shown up out of nowhere and is trying to get into your office building to study you. but it has no idea how to get past a revolving door. it tries for three hours. by the time it finally understands the concept of a revolving door and squeeze into the building everyone in the office is crowded into the lobby to watch and call helpful suggestions. it’s conclusively determined that the alien is definitely not a threat, except maybe to itself.
Vanna here! I have posted some already about this project, and the responses I got, public and otherwise, have been absolutely incredible. Y’all have been reblogging and hyping this before it even finished…I haven’t felt so encouraged about an Utena project since the musicals! (Yes, streams soon, I promise.) You can read the other post to get more details, and catch my post here with more details about the process if you’re interested. The long and short of it?
This is the first artbook I ever scanned. I did it in 2001. In Photoshop, using multiple scans per page that took hours to process. But it was 2001. A half megabyte file that was 1250px wide was considered extremely hardcore and impressive. That’s just always been the business I’m in when it comes to Utena art, you know?
It’s now the latest artbook I’ve scanned, and so much of the process, and effort involved, is unchanged. What has changed, is the result. Welcome to your new desktop background. Your new phone background. Your new poster print.
What I’ve done here is attempt to create definitive digitized images of Chiho Saito’s work as offered by this book--I have removed the print moiré of the original scans, and used my literal decades of experience to try and tease out as much information from them as possible. Without being physically in front of the original artwork (which is a thing I’ve had the great fortune to get to do) this is The Most Chiho Saito you are ever going to get. I’ve tried my best to make sure there is a way to get it that works for everyone:
Do you just wanna scope 'em out? Look at some disaster gays? Grab your favorite one or two? This is the path for you! Check out the ‘compressed’ (not very) 10k ‘web friendly’ (not really) copy at the Bibliothèque, the media archiving wing of the Something Eternal forums at Empty Movement*. All the following links are also available from here.
Do you want these copies? All of them? Don't just grab them individually, friend. This batch is 375MB and can be downloaded as a zip of the individual files here on our Google Drive.
Do you like digital archiving? Are you looking for a copy that preserves the archival quality of the effort but sits nice and comfy in a single file? This is for you. A minimally compressed 10k, 513MB version worked into a PDF is now up, shiny and chrome, on the Internet Archive.
Do you like the idea of the minimal compression, but want the individual files in a zip? Yep I did that too, here's the drive link.
Are you looking to print these in a larger size? This is probably the only reason on Earth you’d ever want them, and yet a bunch of you are going to go straight for these. Here are the zero-compression JPG full size copies, most of them are 15k across, like simply a ridiculous size. Pick your fave and download it from our Google Drive!
I am genuinely really proud of this work.** I was able to tease out so much new detail from these…her incredible layering techniques, the faintest brush of her highlights, and the full range of her delicate hand at whites and blacks… details commonly lost in digitization. I sincerely hope you find something here that you’re looking for, as an artist looking for inspiration, as a weeb looking for a desktop, as an archiver excited to see incredible 90s manga artwork saved forever in the digital realm. I feel like I have already said so much about them, and could keep going, but you know what? This work speaks for itself. Enjoy, use, explore, and definitely tell us what you think!
We love y’all. ~ Vanna & Yasha
* AHEM ASTERISK AHEM
You might be wondering what any of that is. Something Eternal? Biblewhatawhat??? EmptyMovement.com? You might even have done a double take at the word ‘forum.’ And you should!!!
I have a confession. This artbook was my ‘side project’ as I worked on this, *the main project.* For a couple years I’ve been banging around with a new domain, and originally I had other plans for it, but Elon Musk ruined my Twitter and Discord is well along on its way to enshittification, and well….we joke on the Discord a lot about ‘reject modernity, embrace forums’ and you know what? We’re right. So Yasha and I are putting our money where our mouths are once again, and doing something insane. We are launching, in 2023, a website forum. Obviously, this is not the official ‘launch’ per se, but I cannot announce the artbook without directing you to the forum, since it sits on the attached very cool gallery system. Oops! Told on myself. Another post more focused on the forum will be forthcoming, but if you are just that motivated to get in right away, you absolutely can! (This will help stagger new arrivals anyway, which is good for us!) If you would rather wait for the ‘official’ launch, by all means that’s coming, including a lengthy screed about how and why we’re doing this. In either case, remember: this is a couple weebs trying to make internet magic happen, we are not website developers by trade. Give us grace as we iron things out and grow into this cool new website thingie…hopefully along with some of you! :D
If you do join up, naturally, there is a thread about this project!
** If you like this kind of content, consider helping us pay for it! We do have a Patreon! If you’re wanting to use these in some public-facing distributive way, all we ask is for credit back to Empty Movement (ohtori.nu or emptymovement.com, either will work.)
I would like to say ‘don’t just slap these files on RedBubble to get easy money’ but I know that saying this won’t effectively prevent it. Y’all that do that suck, but you’re not worth letting it rain on the rest of this parade. :)
i thought my laptop was on its last leg because it was running at six billion degrees and using 100% disk space at all times and then i turned off shadows and some other windows effects and it was immediately cured. i just did the same to my roommate's computer and its performance issues were also immediately cured. okay. i guess.
so i guess if you have creaky freezy windows 10/11 try searching "advanced system settings", go to performance settings, and uncheck "show shadows under windows" and anything else you don't want. hope that helps someone else.
hey this is apparently helping a lot of people! adding that on top of this you can also go to settings > personalization > colors and turn off transparency to also boost performance. this wasn't the Big Fix for me but might as well do that too if you're trying to optimize.
Recently I got to participate in a fun Geno Collab, where we all just drew Geno in different art styles! You can see the finished piece here (x), my Geno is just slightly to the right of the big one :) I tried to do my typical, over the top, edgy redesign for it. He's a Figma now, don't mess with him!
Sorry I'm on here so sparsely, but I wanted to come back on to let everyone know that my girlfriend's first book is coming out on October 1st, and it is available for preorder!
It's called The Bindings: The Girl With Cerebral Palsy And The Experiences That Hold Me Together. It's a collection of her poetry, and I know I'm biased, but believe me when I tell you it is amazing work.
If you're at all interested, please show your support by clicking on the link and pre-ordering!
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