Toon Talk
Page 2 of 3

The Animation Groove:
In this briefer featurette, you can watch how a particular scene (in this case, the dinner scene where Yzma and Kronk try to poison Kuzco) is created throughout the animation process with split screen comparisons, from storyboard to rough animation to clean-up animation to the final full-color product.

The dinner scene
(c) Disney

Once you are done with these two, you can go onto the other sections of "The Secret Lab" for even more extras:

Development:

• The Development Process: Included in The Studio Groove, explains how the concept for The Emperor's New Groove was developed and how it was decided that it would 'break the mold' of previous Disney animated features and be a screwball buddy comedy. We also learn that animated films are developed on two parallel paths, the story itself and the visual look of the movie.
• The Research Trip: Included in the standard DVD. (See Part 1)
• Story Treatment: An all text description of the story for the film. A complete waste of space as A) if you have already seen the movie, this is redundant, and B) if you haven't seen the movie, it gives away the whole plot.
• Visual Development Gallery: Concept art to help the artist grasp the feel of the film, depicting the various locals featured, including Kuzco's palace, Pacha's village and Mudka's Meat Hut.
• Kingdom of the Sun: The most disappointing aspect of this disc is that it virtually ignores the original concept of this movie, originally titled Kingdom of the Sun. If you are looking for Disney to come clean on the tumultuous early production of this film, which included defecting animators and a scrapped song score, you ain't gonna find it here. All that is left is a gallery of early concept art in which we can only attempt to glean what this film was originally going to be like.

Story and Editorial:

• The Story Process: Focuses on the story department, which consists of storyboard artists and writers, who work together to create the characters and how they will tell the story. (Also included in The Studio Groove.)
• The Pitch: See three different story pitches for the opening number, Perfect World. We learn in the second pitch that in Kingdom of the Sun, as it was then called, Kuzco sang this song. A fascinating peek at how they 'choreograph' a Disney song and also how they will constantly re-work a scene to get it right.
• Putting It Up On Reels: Another interesting revelation: the editorial department takes the individual storyboard frames and creates a story reel, with dialogue, sound effects and music tracks added. This is done to get a feel for how the scenes are working and to get an idea of how long each scene will be before they go on to the next step of actually being animated. (Also included in The Studio Groove.)

Deleted and Unused Scenes:
The first deleted scene, "Practice Destruction of Pacha's Village", is included on the standard DVD. (See Part 1)

"Pacha's Family": Interesting to note that Pacha's family was originally a lot bigger, with a scrappy grandpa and a surfer dude next-door-neighbor who, in typical sitcom fashion, bursts into the room unannounced and at the worst possible moments. Upon discovering the talking llama, the village throws him a welcoming party. This scene was to long, unfunny and unoriginal and didn't make it past the storyboarding phase.

"Original Kuzcotopia Ending": The original ending for the film had Kuzco building his full-size summer pad on the mountaintop neighboring Pacha's village. In the big grand opening party of Kuzcotopia, we see all the characters joining in for the fun, including the guards that were turned into animals in the final battle. The final gag has Kronk in his apron coming out of the kitchen wanting a "head count for dessert." His shoulder angel and devil pop in, with their own aprons on, and say "We got you covered!"  

This ending was nixed when Sting, an avid environmentalist, noted that to have Kuzco still build Kuzcotopia showed that he didn't learn anything from what had happened to him through the course of the film. It was still "socially irresponsible" and "ecologically unfriendly" for him to do so, and the scene was altered to what you see in the final film.

While I can see why they made the change, it still would have been fun to see that octopus playing volleyball ...

Layouts and Backgrounds:

• Layout and Background Departments: The layout artists are very important to animated films, as they are basically the art director and cinematographer combined. They prepare the work for the animators and background artists, who "create the stages where the animated characters will play." (Included in The Studio Groove.)
• Inside Scene Planning: This department is where all the initial drawings are first put into the computer to create the timing sheets used by the director and the animators. These sheets allow the animators to get the exact timing right for each line of dialogue, gesture, et cetera.
• Storyboard to Background Comparison: Included in The Animation Groove.
• The Workbook Gallery: Thumbnail sketches of the dinner scene, showing the preliminary creation of the scene, focusing on composition and camera angles.
• Layout, Color Key and Background Galleries: Examples of the best layout artwork, color keys (used to establish the color scheme for each scene) and background paintings for The Emperor's New Groove.