Watch the Short Fan Film “The Adventures of Indiana Jones”!

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Dr. Jones and “Short Round” in Patrick Schoenmaker’s animated short, “The Adventures of Indiana Jones.” (photo by Patrick Schoenmaker via nydailynews.com)

 

Artist Patrick Schoenmaker who has been working on an animated Indiana Jones cartoon for over five years briefly spoke with Inverse shortly before its release on Schoenmaker’s personal blog today. The artist shared his thoughts on bringing the famous archaeologist Dr. Jones back in animated form. Also, don’t forget to take a look at the new adventure short right here. Read on for more!

 

The video short titled The Adventures of Indiana Jones, based upon the beautiful “Escaping the Tomb” piece that was commissioned by Lucasfilm for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has been finally released.

 

The brand-new Indiana Jones animated one-minute short brings several characters from the film series into imaginative new worlds, with new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that were signatures throughout the franchise.

 

Shortly before the release of the video on his blog, Inverse had a chance to chat with Schoenmaker about the release of his animated adventure, how it came about, the process of creating it, what he hoped to gain from releasing it, and his thoughts on the hurdles of creating an Indiana Jones cartoon.

 

“The professor returns” – Patrick Schoenmaker

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Q: Inverse: How did your “Escaping the Tomb” piece that was commissioned by Lucasfilm for Crystal Skull come about?

Acme Archives produces prints from IPs from all kinds of movies studios like Disney. They stumbled across some artwork I did for the Indiana Jones fansite TheRaider.net I did in about 2005, because I previously posted some artwork on a message board for artist J. Scott Campbell. He had these monthly drawing jams on his message boards that he was personally involved in, and he’d always contribute artwork himself. He’s a huge Indiana Jones fan and suggested Indy as a topic for that month. Then Acme asked me to do “Escaping the Tomb.”

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Q: Inverse: What was the process like creating that?

They didn’t ask me to do a print in an animated style, but it was just the natural approach for me. My background is in animation, and the seed for how you’d translate the Indiana Jones character into an animated style was already somewhere in my mind. The print was the best chance to explore that.
The preliminary sketches I had were really cartoony, and I felt that it broke with the Indiana Jones world. If it’s too much of a cartoon, it loses the danger and thrill. It becomes too slapstick. Each draft, I started over with what worked in the previous attempts to keep making it better.

 

Q: What made you want to expand it into an animated cartoon?

I already had the idea for an animated teaser for a movie I liked from my teen years when I worked on my version of an Army of Darkness animated cartoon. But, I was too inexperienced, and it didn’t go anywhere. That made me understand what translates into animation and what doesn’t, and the Indy print set that idea in motion again.

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Q: Inverse: What did you want to accomplish with The Adventures of Indiana Jones?

Certain websites make it look like there’s a full feature film coming up, but it’s more of a proof of concept. My main idea was not to make a trailer that would have just been an excuse to take some random scenes and edit them together to look cool. I wanted a story, but I didn’t have the time to make it a full short, so instead, I came up with something like the intro to the Batman animated series.

It boiled down the feel and essence of any Batman story into a one-minute intro. It’s a great short film by itself because it makes you hungry for the episode, so I took that approach.

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Q: Inverse: What are the visual ingredients of an Indiana Jones story?

I took what could be iconic scenes from Indiana Jones but not from any particular movie or story. There’s a scene in a temple that’s collapsing and he swings across a lake with crocodiles, but it’s not from Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s another that’s on the back of a tank, but it’s not from Last Crusade.
I also wanted to included scenes where you haven’t seen Indy before, so there’s also a polar snow scene. There’s another where he’s at college too.

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Q: There’ve been many Star Wars cartoons, but why do you think there hasn’t been an Indiana Jones cartoon yet?

When you think about turning Star Wars into an animated series for a younger audience, you can include things like the Force and lightsaber battles without it being a problem. But if you take the main things from Indiana Jones, like people melting and heads exploding and Nazis, it’s trickier.

 

You can read the complete interview over at Inverse.com.

 

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Now, sit back and enjoy the all-new animated adventure “The Adventures of Indiana Jones” ……….

 

But first, a note from the creator!

Finally, here it is, The Adventures of Indiana Jones! It’s been a long journey getting this made and I’m very excited to finally share it with you all! I hope you will have fun watching it as much as I had making it and please let me know what you thought of it.
Get that whip crackin’!

 

 

 

 

Don’t forget to take a look at the “Making of” photos and his personal thoughts over at his blog site

 

 

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27 thoughts on “Watch the Short Fan Film “The Adventures of Indiana Jones”!

  • September 29, 2016 at 5:39 pm
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    Now I really want an animated Indiana Jones series.
    This was amazing!

  • September 29, 2016 at 5:46 pm
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    This is crazy, Disney if you’re reading this, call this guy ASAP and give him couple million dollars to make this reality. Haven’t seen anything that brilliant from Lucasfilm brands in ages, + what is so awesome is that its all drawn no that lazy CGI that get’s throw around everywhere these days. Again, Lucasfilm, HIRE THIS MAN AND MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

    • September 29, 2016 at 9:30 pm
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      “lazy” CGI. You can dislike it, but calling it lazy means you have no clue.

  • September 29, 2016 at 5:59 pm
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    I’ve been wanting Disney to give Star Wars this type of treatment. Its so much nicer than the 3D CGI that theyve been doing.

    • September 29, 2016 at 10:01 pm
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      Yes, agreed. I find all that cgi stuff is just soulless.

  • September 29, 2016 at 6:01 pm
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    Amazingly well done! My hat off to you sir…Disney…Give this man a job TODAY!

  • September 29, 2016 at 6:21 pm
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    YES. Where has this been my entire life?

  • September 29, 2016 at 7:05 pm
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    I miss Indy… Felt good to see him!

  • September 29, 2016 at 7:14 pm
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    Sadly I enjoyed that more than the Crystal Skull. We need a cartoon of this caliber!!

  • September 29, 2016 at 7:44 pm
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    Meh….it belongs in a museum!

    • September 29, 2016 at 10:00 pm
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      So do YOU.

  • September 29, 2016 at 9:38 pm
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    This was great. Sad it was only a minute long. But of course hand drawn animation takes an incredibly long time. But the potential of this mixed with voice actors and a longer run time would be fantastic. Here’s hoping Disney and Lucasfilm hire this gentleman to make this into a full blown series. It would be a great thing to air on Disney XD to introduce the younger generations to Indiana Jones much in the same way Star Wars Rebels has.

  • September 29, 2016 at 10:00 pm
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    Beautiful. Simply beautiful.

    I wish Disney/Lucasfilm would put something out of this quality officially for either Indy or Star Wars, instead of the lacklustre cgi work of Rebels.

    • September 29, 2016 at 11:21 pm
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      I won’t call it lackluster if I was you.

      • September 30, 2016 at 6:15 am
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        I would.

        • September 30, 2016 at 6:22 am
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          Pessimists everywhere…

          • September 30, 2016 at 6:35 am
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            To be fair, it’s getting better. Pretty soon, it’ll be in line with TCW.

        • September 30, 2016 at 5:13 pm
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          First two seasons I would too. Last week’s ep. however was a leap forward for them visually. Now all they have to do is tell some entertaining stories that don’t involve saving space whales.

          • October 1, 2016 at 7:26 pm
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            You’re asking too much of them.

  • September 29, 2016 at 11:34 pm
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    Real outstanding work!

  • September 30, 2016 at 12:23 am
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    Fucking fantastic.

  • September 30, 2016 at 2:00 am
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    hand-drawn animation gets me really excited because it has so much energy than cheap flash cartoons. Hopefully SOMEONE will see this and think “maybe animation like this should be brought back”.

  • September 30, 2016 at 3:16 am
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    awesome!

  • September 30, 2016 at 3:51 am
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    Great work!
    I was hoping Sallah would be included. Maybe next time.
    I am the monarch of the sea…

  • September 30, 2016 at 6:14 am
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    Wonderful.

  • September 30, 2016 at 9:51 am
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    Trully amazing work!!
    Definetly a tv series should follow this clip.
    But after weeks expecting a good “fan film”, i was expecting that, a ” short film”. :p
    At least 5-8 minutes with a short story with actor voices. This is more a tribute, a sublime tribute, by the way. An intro to a cool future project.
    The essence is there and no doubt this man will be related to future Lucasfilm projects.

  • September 30, 2016 at 12:07 pm
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    perfect way to recapture what made Indy great, if Mr Ford would sign on to do the voice…no reason they wouldn’t make huge money at the box office with some movies

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