Title card of the 1995 demo.
Status: Found
Date found: 14 Aug 2017
Found by: Hilal H.
The Adventures of Johnny Quasar (also known as simply Johnny Quasar) is a 40 seconds long demo that is a precursor for Jimmy Neutron. Created in 1995 by John Davis and his partner Keith Alcorn with initial designs by Paul Claerhout, it was first shown publicly at the 1995 SIGGRAPH conference, winning two awards – Best in Character Animation and Best in Show – for the LightWave 3D engine called "Waveys". Another demo of the same title was produced in 1997, featuring the titular character confronting aliens.
Impressed with the demo, series producer Steve Oedekerk partnered with DNA Productions and helped with the production of a new, 13-minute pilot to pitch to Nickelodeon. The new pilot (titled Runaway Rocketboy) marked the first appearance of Jimmy Neutron. Apparently, his name was changed to avoid parallels being drawn to other popular characters Jonny Quest and Captain Quasar.
Gallery
Concept Art
The earliest production artwork for the Johnny Quasar characters by series designer and artist Paul Claerhout.
A screenshot from the second 1997 demo of Johnny Quasar, featuring Johnny and Goddard walking in the moonlight.
Another one, showing Johnny and his family.
Later production art with early versions of Sheen, Nick, Cindy, and Carl, produced by Paul Claerhout in collaboration with Keith Alcorn, shortly before the name change.
Concept art that features early sketches of Johnny and his robotic dog, Goddard.
Magazine and booklet scans
Scans courtesy of computerarchive.org, Redditor /u/siliconclassics and a 4chan anon.
Pages 46 and 47 from a 1995 issue of Video Toaster, an article about the Wavey Awards, of which Johnny Quasar is prominently featured.
Pages 48 and 49 from a 1995 issue of Video Toaster, the rest of that article showing John Davis accepting his award that Johnny Quasar won.
A perspective corrected photo of an unknown book or magazine talking briefly about Johnny Quasar.
Pages 52 of a 1996 issue of Computer Graphics World, showing some high-quality images from the demo.
Page 11 of NewTekniques Issue 17 featuring an article on how DNA Productions came to creating The Adventures of Johnny Quasar, and how it evolved into what we know today as Jimmy Neutron.
References