''Shrek – I Feel Good Animation Test'' is a 1996 American short film that was directed by

Jeffrey Katzenberg Jeffrey Katzenberg ( ; born December 21, 1950) is an American media proprietor and film producer. He served as chairman of Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios from 1984 to 1994, a position in which he oversaw production and busin ...

and produced by J. J. Abrams,

Rob Letterman Robert Thomas Letterman (born October 31, 1970) is an American film director and screenwriter. He made his directorial debut as co-director of the animated comedy film ''Shark Tale'' (2004), for which he received a nomination for the Annie Award ...

, and Loren Soman. The animation test of

Shrek ''Shrek'' is a 2001 American animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, and written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Joe Stillman, and Roger S. H. Schulman, loosely based on the 1990 children's picture boo ...

is set to

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...

's 1965 single "

I Got You (I Feel Good) "I Got You (I Feel Good)" is a song by the American singer James Brown. First recorded for the 1964 album '' Out of Sight'' and then released in an alternate take as a single in 1965 and included on the compilation album of the same name, it w ...

". Shrek's voice was provided by

Chris Farley Christopher Crosby Farley (February 15, 1964 – December 18, 1997) was an American actor and comedian. He was a member of Chicago's Second City Theatre and later a cast member of the NBC sketch comedy show ''Saturday Night Live'' for fiv ...

and the mugger was voiced by

Tom Kenny Thomas James Kenny (born July 13, 1962) is an American actor and comedian. He has been voicing SpongeBob SquarePants (character), the titular character in ''SpongeBob SquarePants'' and associated media since its debut in 1999. Kenny has voice ...

. A 5-second snippet of the short was uploaded to

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

on October 6, 2010 as part of Loreno Soman's demo reel. 13 years later on September 15, 2023, a YouTube user named TheNormalGuy213 found more stills from the film. On November 23, 2023, Barry E. Jackson released the short film on his YouTube channel, The Zoom Art Studio, following an interview with some of the animators of the animation test. The film was a popular source of discussion in the animation community, and the

lost media Lost media is any piece of media thought to no longer exist in any format, or for which no copies can be located. The term primarily encompasses visual, audio, or audiovisual media such as films, television, radio broadcasts, music, and video ...

community, due to not being publicly available at the time. Originally, the remaining 29 seconds of the film was held by an unknown

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

buyer who bought the film and several sculptures of the old Shrek model on a now closed eBay auction, that was opened by a Dreamworks employee named Tim Lawrence II.

Plot

is dancing in a medieval village at nighttime to the

song "

". A masked bandit jumps down from a building hanging on a rope to mug Shrek. The bandit threatens Shrek with a knife, but Shrek laughs at him, pulls on the bandit's rope, and sends the bandit flying into the sky. Shrek looks up, and resumes dancing.

Cast

as Mugger

Reception and legacy

When it was presented to Jeffrey Katzenberg and other officials in May 1997, Katzenberg disliked it to the point that he discarded the tape that the animation team held during that meeting, (they had another tape which was sold in the eBay auction in 2018) and the animation team who worked on the film, nicknamed the Propellerheads, were consequently fired after the presentation. The film was completely unknown up until 2018, when the eBay auction caught attention since people did not have much information on the pre-development of Shrek, and it eventually was bought by an unknown eBay buyer for $3,000.

References

External links

* {{Shrek (franchise) 1996 animated short films 2023 YouTube videos 2022 YouTube videos American animated short films Films produced by J. J. Abrams Shrek (franchise) films