Ask Dan Norton Anything - a ThunderCats.org Q&A

  1. The relationship betwen Jaga and Tygra
    2 What has Panthro exactly been doing all the time he was away?
    3 Lynx-O
  2. Were there plans for the warrior maidens and the molemen?

Can we hear more about Bengali and his story other than that he was Tygra and Cheetara’s kid? Would he still have been a blacksmith with a hammer?

What made you choose the theme of searching for stones? Couldn’t they have been searching for something from the OS like the Treasures of Thundera?

Speaking of the Treasures of Thundera; was Kit’s flute inspired by the OS flute that could control animals and Snarfs?

Where did the decision to make them mobile come from instead of having a base like the Cat’s Lair?

Which redesign are you the most proud of?

Were any of the other TCats other than Lion-O ever going to use any of the stones?

What do you miss the most about working on the show?

Which single episode are you the most proud of? Or which one came together exactly the way you envisioned?

Was Thundrainium (the element that drained their power; not to be confused with Thundrillium) ever going to be part of the story?

Are there any Non-OS characters that we never got to see that you really wish you could’ve told the story for?

Was Mumm-Rana ever going to appear in the New Series?

Were the Lunataks ever going to appear?

Were there plans to show New Thundera?

What was going to happen to the Sword of Plundarr at the end of the series?

What was going to happen to the Power Stones at the end of the Story Arc?

What does the fourth stone do?

  1. Did you had any alternative take on the new show?
  2. Why choose to make Mumm-Ra tech savvy instead having him purely as a spirit/emissary of evil who only dabbles in arcane art of magic?
  3. What was the secret to Snarf?
  4. How big a role were the ancient spirits of evil going to play?
  5. Did Mumm-Ra really have a laundry cauldron? :stuck_out_tongue:

Were there any plans to delve into Third Earth’s full history while the show was out?

many of my questions have already been asked, but…

1: Would Mumm-Ra’s cat disguise, Pumm-Ra, ever make an appearance?
2: Was Grune ever going to return/ appear again
3: Were you ever going to show more female background animals (birds/ dogs/ monkeys ect..)
4: Did Mumm-Ra ever plan to build a Castle Plun-Darr?
5: Did you ever plan to explore/ elaborate further on Kaynar’s insanity in later episodes?
6:Would Jagara, or some version of her, ever make an appearance?

I’m excited about this :slight_smile: Thanks for your time

I can answer part of this. Dan posted an image of an insectoid guy on his DeviantArt page a while back and said his story was tied to Hachiman. So I think he was planned to eventually show up.

http://dannortonart.deviantart.com/art/Bug-boss-1-352661281

Anyway my final question: Why did the Ancient Spirits of Evil send Mumm-Ra in search of the stones in the first place? He seemed to already be more powerful than anyone who was opposing him without having them.

  1. Were there going to be any more episodes or moments that address Tygra’s racism/prejudice against the other Animal races/species?

  2. Did Cheetara have a problem with Tygra being prejudiced? If she did, was she ever going to voice her issue with his biases?

  3. Were there any plans to show the actual story of what happened to Leo and the other Animals after they landed on Third Earth?

  4. Were we ever going to find out about all of Pumyra’s past (besides her death, I mean)?

  5. I’ve heard that in Season Two that Cheetara’s past was going to be uncovered and that she carries a lot of guilt. Exactly what was her past going to be about?

  6. Was there going to be an episode or moment that showed exactly how did Wilykit and Wilykat’s mother and other siblings reacted after finding out they ran away?

  7. Who was Lion-O going to end up with?

8 ) If Willa and the Amazon Maidens were going to appear, were they going to be human or re-imagined as Cats? What were the characteristics of Willa’s and Nayda’s personalities?

  1. How did Mumm-Ra become Lord over the Animals’ ancestors?

Based on the concept art and comments at the following link it looks like you wanted Safari Joe to make an appearance, but there was also a fallback option of the Conquedor being unveiled as Safari Joe. Could you elaborate on how you (optimally) would have liked to introduce him and what the story-line would have been if he was the Conquedor?

http://dannortonart.deviantart.com/art/Safari-Joe-352662808?offset=10#comments

Thanks everyone for submitting your questions. We’re no longer accepting any new questions to the ongoing list.

We’ll be compiling a list of questions and then they’ll be submitted to Dan. Note that we’ll be editing the questions down to remove duplicates, and to remove questions that were answered in previous interviews or crew responses. Some questions will be edited out just because of the overwhelming volume of questions that we have received. We want to give Dan a manageable chunk of questions to deal with.

Hopefully we can do a second round of questions with Dan in the future, in the meantime we’ll try and focus on the questions that seem to be most popular or particularly interesting.

I want to manage everyone’s expectations of Dan’s responses. Understand that some questions will likely go unanswered for various reasons, and some answers are likely to be mysterious and lead to more questions still. Remember that an artist always wants to leave some part of their creation open to the viewer’s interpretation and imagination.

We can’t make any promises about a date to expect the answers to be shared here, just be patient and understand that Dan is a busy guy, who is currently putting his talents to use at Riot Games (League of Legends).

No problem.

Thanks for putting this together and I am looking forward to the results!

Thanks for putting this together.

I hope this one will be updated soon, the wait is killing me.

I e-mailed Dan a couple days ago to remind him, haven’t heard back yet.

Cheers,
Mark

How many questions were submitted to him?

I agree with most of your points. Still loved this series in spite of those flaws.

I know Dan is probably busy, but any updates on this?

Unfortunately nothing back yet, I’ll try him again later today.

Busy is Busy. Hard to take time for extra stuff in the middle of production, drains the life outta ya. Even if the extra stuff is something you really like a lot… Especially if it’s stuff you really like a lot, 'cause you wanna do a good job of it and your tired and don’t feel like you can.