Mess O' Blues (partially found prototype short of "Johnny Bravo" Cartoon Network animated series; 1993)

Screencap from the short.

Status: Partially Found

Mess O' Blues was the original thesis short for Johnny Bravo created by Van Partible in 1993.

Origins

Concept art.

While working at Loyola Marymount University, Partible decided to pursue a career in animation, and so he started working on a senior thesis project called Mess O' Blues.

Partible started with the concept of three Elvis Presley impersonators who fought crime. However, due to his time constraints and the fact that he was doing all of the work himself, it was cut down to one Elvis impersonator.

Becoming Johnny Bravo

Johnny Bravo.

Dan McLaughin (Partible's animation professor) showed the short to a friend working at Hanna-Barbera Productions.

The studio saw the short and loved it so much they asked Partible if he could do a pitch for a seven-minute short cartoon, with Mess O' Blues as the inspiration. This became the original Johnny Bravo short.

The character was changed so that, as Partible put it, " he would be more of this '50's iconic James Dean-looking character that talked like Elvis."

Other changes include his hair colour, name, physical appearance, and personality.

This new pilot was later aired on World Premiere Toons (also known as What a Cartoon!).

Resurfacing

Despite its success, Mess O' Blues has never been released or even seen publicly, unlike the widely available and similarly made What a Cartoon predecessor The Whoopass Girls - which would later become The Powerpuff Girls.

The only footage that has ever been made available are a few short, mute clips in a mini-documentary on the Johnny Bravo Season 1 DVD entitled Bringing Up Johnny Bravo.

Footage

In January 2017, Lost Media Wiki user YoshiKiller2S got ahold of the Johnny Bravo Season 1 DVD and ripped and uploaded Bringing Up Johnny Bravo to YouTube and then later to Archive.org and with it, was a total of 15 mute seconds of Mess O' Blues footage. YoshiKiller2S also discovered four Mess O' Blues animation cels from a YouTube video which was uploaded by the official Loyola Marymount University channel.

All Mess O' Blues clips from the mini-documentury.

LSuperSonicQ's video on the subject.

How Van Partible ’93 Gave Life to Johnny Bravo which includes the four animation cels.

The full Bringing Up Johnny Bravo mini-documentury.

A Speech Bubble interview with Van Partible where he talks about Mess O' Blues.

Animation Cels

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