In all creatures, great and small, there exists the spirit of athletic competition...
With these words, uttered by Keen Hacksaw, Zoo network correspondent, the TV coverage of the first Olympic Games dedicated to the animal kingdom begins.
Animalympics, a pair of animated TV specials created by Steven Lisberger, famous for his later work, Tron, were commissioned by NBC to air during the 1980 Olympic Games. The winter games, then happening the season right before the summer games, aired in February 1979. Noting the announcement in TV guide, and having an early VCR I taped the show.
It was like nothing I had ever seen before, though I was a huge fan of animation in general. The style was somewhat Saturday morning, not Disney nor WB, but much better then typical TV fare. The character designs were clever, attractive and even obviously sexy. The art direction and effects were also very good, and the dialog and voices were amazing. The show was a spoof of the latest trend in sports reporting, the 'up close and personal' style with edited interviews and added other content besides the actual sports coverage. The overall effect was spot-on! Even the original music score was amazing, created by Graham Gouldman of 10CC.
Unfortunately the hour-long summer game show was never shown, due to the US boycott of the Moscow games. A few years later, a 90 minute feature, made by cutting together the separate shows started airing on cable and other pay TV services. A friend taped it for me as a birthday present, and it was wonderful! Not only was it more of the same great content, but there were weasel characters! A mink, a sable and an otter. My cup runnith over!
A year later, a friend and co-worker who worked in an audio visual company suggested that we could re-edit show. Since I had my tape of the original winter games, e could make a summer games show by dissecting the feature. We used the Umatic cassette editing system in the studio to create the new version, which we premiered at the Cartoon/Fantasy Organization (the first US Anime fan club I was involved with) screening, and it was a huge hit! After that, I screened the 'C/FO' version at SF and comic conventions all over the world, including CobFurence. Animalympics was the ultimate furry entertainment, with attractive, sexy characters in a clever story with a realistic setting, Fans would memorize the dialog and repeat it during certain scenes, and make clever comments and remarks. It became known as the Rocky Horror of furry fandom.
Eventually the tape copies became so worn out as to be unwatchable. But technology marches on... My mate, Changa, and I began to work on restoring the recreated version of the show. He used modern software to clean up the original winter games, and found a DVD collectors addition of the feature made in Germany by fans. We worked for several weeks in our spare time, processing video, adjusting frame rates, normalizing round... Till in February, 2014, 35 years from the original airing of the winter games, a restored version of the C/FO Animalympics is complete!
This Friday, 5-30-14, in the CaliFur 10 Video Theater, Michael Fremer, co-creator, music editor, and voice actor of the production will be our special guest for the premier of the restored Animlympics. I hope you will be there to share this wonderful furry experience with us.
...and now... Live, via satellite... Animalympics!