I really am not sure. Of course I still hold hope, and it doesn’t make much sense to me to announce a TV series at a toy-fair, but stilll. I mean I believe deep down that thundercats is not dead, and that it will continue, but there are still doubts in my mind. Doubts I wish never existed. I am thrilled by the idea of a relaunch, but so far nothing good has happened with it. Nothing more than rumour has cropped up. I will still hold out hope, but my hope may not be enough. Then again, not everything is as it appears.
i think Tcats will continue on, and am stil lhopeful for some new material but honestly a new cartoon is not what i want i would love to play all 130 episodes in a rpg game or something for Ps3 with cel lshading type gfx, that would be cool.
Please do so. It’s not right to have rumors flying around without any of idea of who or where they came from and why they were created.
You say the rejected drawings belonged to a former Warner Brothers animator. Did he put them out on the 'Net? Or did somebody else? Can you find out? I’d like to know.
Well, I did like the artwork, but I feel a bit better if this is the case - rejected artwork from a former animator. Lino-O just looked too Batman villian-ish.
He put it out himself. He has a deviant art page…again, I have it somewhere on my external HD (reformatted my HD a couple weeks ago). He put the Lion-O out first and people loved it so much that he put out the Mumm-Ra design soon after. As people commented, he responded with more information such as how he used to work for WB and now works for Nickelodeon and that their were plans to have a new series sometime around 2002-03, but plans fell through.
So yeah, the artwork is almost 5 years old and may or may not represent any new series that might eventually come out. The new designs might look similar, but I doubt it will look exactly the same.
Good point. Things do change over a course of time as a project progresses and I speak for myself when I say this because I am working on a project that originally started last October. Some changes were made with my project during that time.
Yeah change will be enevitable in the end if they do anything at all but as long as they don’t change it around too much to the point where it damages the franchise then that will be cool 
More news on this - complete with artwork! 
Chris here…
Over at the Forums on another site I frequent, www.he-man.org, a poster over there has posted up some character design artwork that was actually submitted to Warner Brothers for consideration for a new ThunderCats series! This poster has very kindly given me permission to host this artwork here - remember that these are not necessarily final character designs for a new TCats series, but these are official pieces of concept artwork!
Click on this link below to see the artwork:
http://ic3.deviantart.com/fs13/i/2007/071/7/8/THUNDERCATS_DEVELOPMENT____by_LeSean.jpg
A couple of interesting points - firstly, it’s likely that these character designs have been abandoned by WB, simply because the artist has been allowed to post them up at www.deviantart.com. Secondly, the concept behind this artwork gives credence to the “ThunderCats as rock band” concept - note the character of “Leon” - although I have no info about this whatsoever, my bet is that the concept behind this was a potential Prince Adam/He-Man deal, with rock band member Leon being an alter-ego for Lion-O. Here’s hoping WB have abandoned this concept!
The third point of interest is that the forum member who posted this up at www.he-man.org said that the artist had given him permission to link to it, “to see if we can raise more eyebrows on this show as its in development hell at Warner at the moment” - make of that what you will…
The fourth and final point of interest is that the artwork you see was drawn by an artist known as LeSean - of special interest to me is that LeSean was the artist on Dreamweave’s short-lived Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic series!
The plot thickens, folks…
Take care…
Just saw it, Chris! I’m glad this didn’t get the green-light…it is UGLY!
I’m about to post this on the front page!
Chris here…
Manny = legend!
Take care…
This is straight from Lesean’s page:
[I]There’s been a lot of talk about the recent Thundercats animated series by WB animation being brought back. Currently it’s been put on hold. That said, i’d like to finally reveal that I was working as the lead character designer in development on this new show along with mega talent and cool buddy, Sam Liu (Godzilla animated). Here’s just a smidget of the amount of designs produced for this project since the final look isnt near this.
Early Lion-o, and I wont get too far into who the kid is, but i think you can get the idea. below are several very, very VERY EARLY ideas on how to approach the look graphically. I like the original pass out of the 3 the best though. more organic, y’know?[/I]
I’m pleased this wasn’t past either the artwork is horrible for TCats and to be taking Thundercats into a whole rocknroll type deal just well..it sucks is all.
If you check out the front page of our site, we also reported that his art book that will be released in time for SDCC will have more concept designs.
Good, I’m glad it’s been put on hold. Maybe the WB can finally get it through its thick skull that the ThunderCats we want are the Cats we’ve always loved. Done by Pacific Animation (though that’s not been their name for a while) and voiced by the original cast.:bengali:
No offense to the artist but even as a Thundercats concept…what an insult 
to one of the best cartoons of all time
Chris here…
First of all, a big thumbs-up to MannyF for locating that additional quote from Lesean himself - this sheds even more light on this story!
I find myself wondering whether there have been new (negative) developments with this since the announcement at Brand Licensing - the fact that there has been no new news forthcoming about this from any of the expected sources, now with the revelation of concept artwork from the lead character designer on the project, along with his statement that the project has been “put on hold”, makes me wonder…
In fact, I find myself wondering whether WB were going to run with this idea, but when they saw the level of antipathy towards it on the Internet, decided to scrap it. I know it might sound far-fetched, but I have seen companies base their decisions on consumer reactions like that, so, who knows!
Take care…
I know it’s very early designs, but I agree with everyone else’s sentiment that those do not look good. I’m also not thrilled with the concept behind them either! Why does Lion-o have to have a secret identity? :rolleyes: No wonder WB threw all this out.
Hopefully they haven’t lost interest and development of the a new show will be an ongoing project. Remember once WB turned down these concepts, that would probably be the end of the contact between WB and the artist. So it’s certainly possible the project is still being developed behind closed doors.
Chris: I think you have a point there, perhaps WB have listened to what folks have said and thought twice about the original concept they had come up with. For a new show to succeed all they need to do is take the best elements from the old show and give the animation an updated look.
I reckon the MYP He-Man would have succeeded if it wasn’t made so serious and had more comedy and kiddy friendly stuff in it. For the most part the animation and the stories were very good. It was just made too adult friendly for kids to get into in my opinion.
sux, sux, sux…
I think a new Thundercats toon should be just like the old one-story wise…and the art should be smooth and anime like with the characters being tall and slender…
I agree with you, but I’m curious about the tall-and-slender part. You’d like seeing the Cats look like the anime characters we see today, tall, willowy, and without the heavy musculature? I’d love seeing Cheetara and Pumyra looking like that. The male Cats, however, would have to have a bit of muscle on them – but not to the point where they look like professional body-builders. That was one of the drawbacks of the original animation; at times they’d have Lion-O, Panthro, and the other adult males so muscle-bound that it was a miracle that they could move at all. Another shortcoming was that they had the Cats moving too much like humans. These beings were part feline. They didn’t have to walk on all fours, but they should have moved with the quick, fluid grace of real-life cats. They also should have had them rely on their natural cat senses as well as their technology. It would have made them even more believeable as characters.:bengali: