 
I can't wait to see this movie! I think this will be one of Disney's best films in many years, I'd say better than Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin.
UPDATE! ok, I saw the movie, and I was right! (oh and sorry for the lack of updates and/or corrections, I have been really busy, beleive it or not rhe Tarzan page is not the most important thing in my life, sorry, but i will be adding all the new picures etc. soon) the movie was teriffic, everything I could have hoped it would be, and i am glad they played down Terk from what I originally saw, (yes beleive it or not she was loonier and wackyer originally ugh!) but one thing I miss, the scene that I saw storyboarded which originally made me fall in love with this move is GONE!!! I suppose Disney thought that switching the blame for the death of Tarzan's parents from the apes to Sabre wasn't enough, and was still to violent for the ankle biters. (but killing a baby gorilla was just fine) so I shall describe the scene to you now, so you may picture it in your mind.
a shot of the cradle where Tarzan is resting, covered by a blanket, he has just fallen asleep. Tarzans father is writing, in a diary I assume. a shot of a pair if cat eyes... watching. Tarzans father looks up, horrified, the quill pen drops, splattering ink on the page. shot of sabre crouching, looking very very menacing. you get the feeling Tarzans father is backing up. Sabre pounces. fight in shadows briefly, Tarzans fathers hand falls limp on the ground. (there may be some errors in the organization, probably very slight as there is not much room to re-arrange them, it's been about 2 years since I saw these boards, I seem to remember a shot of some glasses falling too, but not sure where it fits in) at this time the scene where Kala hears the baby's cries and comes to his rescue would occur and the story would resume as seen in the movie
ooohhh.. NEW update!
ok that does it, I'm re-writing this page... for one, I got my Collectors Edition DVD. and it is VERY cool. and the scene mentioned above IS included on the bonus features! whee! as well as much of the production art I saw at the studio. though one of my favorite concept paintings was not there, one of young tarzan underwater. oh well. Secondly, I finally decided to sit myself down, and READ the Tarzan Novels. and boy was I surprised! oh, I knew Disney's version differed from the novel, no doubt about that. I knew the basics of the story enough to be able to point out some of the (many, as it turns out) differences between the two having never even read the book, such as the fact that in the book he leaves the jungle for Europe, and his parents were killd by the apes rather than Sabor. but never did I imagine it would difer SO MUCH.
not that I'm surprised by the fact that they made some changes, it was inevitable. but they usually stick a bit closer to
the source material than this. Good guys are bad guys (clayton), bad guys are
good guys (kerchack, terk, especially terk, he was vicious in the book),
people live when they should die (kala, terk), people die when they should
live (clayton)... several characters fail to make an appearance at all (too
many to list of the top of my head....), some make much more of an appearane
than in the book, like Tantor. Tarzan's parents werent even shipwrecked.
BUT.... it's actually a good thing. It's like Blade Runner, which is based very, very loosely on 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' by Philip K. Dick. it's so different from
the book that you can appreciate it on it's own rather than nitpick over
slight differences. And, especially having made my own short films, i can appreciate why Disney did it. The book pretty
violent if they wanted to make it a family movie. and though not very long,
it is just way too complex and (belive it or not) philosophical to cram into
a movie as it is... and keeping it short instead of a 3 hour+ epic like
Titanic anyway. or plaining a series of movies rather than just one from the
very beginning. but we all know how horribly that would be executed from
disney and their track record of animated direct to video sequils... *shudders at the thought of such 'classics' as Little Mermaid 2 and that Pochahontas.... thing....* and some
things were considered fine in 1912 when it was written but would come across
as horribly cruel, sexist and racist if shown today. They may have been
considerd perfeclty reasonable back then and are an acurate view of what these
people thought and acted like, it would still anger people. to wander around with balck servants and call them "my blacks", and describing how moors are plague on the face of the earth among other things, even if that is precisely what they would have done back then (though there are also several examples of black people from various villages that act as equals to tarzan and the others as well, but the attitudes exprssed by some *characters* in the book reflect racist views, not the author. and the attiude towards women gets better in the later books, and they're no longer swooning maidens living only to be rescued by Tarzan). Plus we
understand gorillas much better now, enough to know that they're not
bloodthirsty beasts as depicted in the book (though technically they're not
really gorillas, but a closely related species of ape). back when this was written I imagine no one ever dreamed that a gorillacould be taught to speak over 1000 words in sign language. but today it's kind of common knowledge that they're gentle, (well kind of.... males are highly territorial...) inteligent, mostly vegitarian creatures.
I would have never
imagined Tarzan became a secret agent for the french government tho... oh I
knew he went to europe and claimed the greystoke family title, but had never
heard the circumstances of it all.... sounds ludicrous, no? but Burroughs has this
way of making the most absurd ideas and plots seem perfectly reasonable. though I do not like the continual occurence of absolutely mind boggling coincidences that keep popping up... they all get marooned on the same beach TWICE within a year?? after no one had been on that beach for 20 years? and then the son ends up in the smae jungl;e as Tarzan grew up in? riiiiight......
The production art for this movie was spectacular. There were some fabulous paintings done for it, one of which can be seen above, and two below. All the artwork was fantastic, actually. I tried to read through as many of the storyboards as I could while I was there, but we really weren't there for very long, and the storyboards weren't in order. You could be reading through a scene from Tarzan, then all of a sudden you were looking at boards from Hercules. oh well. what I was able to make out should make a very good movie. argh! I'm really not supposed to, but I can't resist saying this, in the original book, Tarzan's father is killed by the gorilla's, but I guess Disney didn't want the apes to look bad, so in this version, he's taken out by a leopard. This scene was extremely powerful, even just in storyboards.... can't wait to see it animated. Another one of the scenes in the film shows eccentric professor Porter disguised as a monkey to study to the apes more closely. very funny!
My personal favorite Character design was of Tantor, the Elephant, alas, I have been unsuccessful in locating any pictures of him anywhere on the net.
 Kevin Lima and Chris Buck are co-directing. the great Glen Keane is the lead animator of Tarzan. Songs are to be compsed by Phil Collins, lyrics by Davis Zippel and Original Score by Alan Silvestry. Tarzan is bieng voiced by Tony Goldwin, Jane's voice will be provided by Minnie Driver, Nigel Hawthorne-Porter will supply the voice of Jane's father, Rossie O'Donnel as Terkoz, Brien Blessed as Clayton, Wayne Knight as an Elephant named Tantor, Glen Close as as Kala, the gorilla who raises Tarzan, and Lance Henricksen as the gorilla leader Kerchak.
Tarzan is a striking character with long, wavy black hair, and a lean, muscular build, wearing nothing but a skimpy loincloth, of course. Jane will not be in the film as much as you might think, since it spends quite a bit of time focusing on Tarzan's childhood, as in the original Edgar Rice Burrughs story "Tarzan of the Apes". Backgrounds will be rendered in 3d, with a special process called Deep Canvas where the background painters paint onto the 3d models, while the characters will be traditionally drawn.
ooooohhhhh... a clip of Tarzan was shown on the Rosie O'donnel Show!! looked terriffic! I had never seen any actual animation from it until then because they were just begining to animate when I was there. man, the characters, and animation looks great, and those leaves!! that Deep Canvas thing looks great! hey, I'm an animator, I notice these things... You can see the clip on RealVideo here
allright people, are you prepared for a really BAD Tarzan joke? I'm waring you, it's a truly horribe joke, but here it is....
Let's us suppose for the sake of this story that you were able to take
a trip to Africa and capture Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. Additionally,
for the sake of this story, we will assume that you were an evil
musician who killed Tarzan and, very much similar to the technique
used with catgut, made violin strings from his intestinal membranes.
Next, supposing you put those strings on your violin, and played a
certain song on and on, endlessly, without ceasing. What song would
you be playing?
What else? Tarzan's Tripes, Forever!
don't blame me....
Character Voices
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Directed by: : Kevin Lima & Chris Buck
Animator
