At the Sonora

Over at Disney Television Animation at the Sonora building, crews are working on Inspector Oso (the second season), and Jake and the Neverland Pirates (first season).

Staff on Oso said they should be working on the series until December "unless they pull the rug out from under us and decide to suddenly cancel it." (Visions of the abrupt decapitation of My Friends Tigger and Pooh's third season obviously dance in their heads.)

And a Neverland Pirates artist remarked to me:

"We've got fifty-two shorts to do on Pirates [That's 26 half-hours.] It'll take us until October to finish, which will be almost a year's worth of work ..."

I took a look at some of the board work for the show. Nice stuff. The Captain and Mr. Smee are in the mix, but I noticed something about Hook I hadn't noticed before.

I mentioned earlier that the good Captain is simplified for the show, and isn't close to being a ringer for the Frank Thomas version at all . (A colorized screen grab can be seen above.)

But funny thing. Monday I was traipsing around the hat building, and came across old model sheets of Hook up on a wall, both the 1953 final and an earlier 1940 model sheet.

And it hit me. The 1940 version -- with big cartoony nose and more boneless, rubbery limbs -- is a close cousin to the Neverland Pirates Hook: a simpler creation than the version that appears in the '53 film.