‘South Park’ Reveals Its Primordial Paper Self
In one of the cooler promotions I’ve seen this year, South Park Studios is putting the original, 24 minute pilot episode of the long running animated series online. The pilot includes four minutes of footage that never aired when it finally went to series.
The episode, which would air in revised form as “Cartman Gets An Anal Probe,” was made and animated out of construction paper cutouts by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the series’ creators.
Nowadays South Park has a much faster turnaround time by using computers, though the original cardboard artistic style remains.
For fans of the series, now in its 13th season, the pilot is a neat look at the creative process that goes into producing a TV show. It also shows just how much the program has changed since it launched in 1997. Seriously, the animation looked like crap. Why Comedy Central bought this series based on the pilot is beyond me. Though I guess that is why they are network execs while I am just a guy with a keyboard.
Comedy Central is running ads against the pilot to bring in some extra bucks. When I clicked they were for that young guy advertising staple Axe body spray.
The pilot will run for 30 days only at Southparkstudios.com.
You can check it out here.
tish commented:
its a bit wierd then that the official south park website seems to think it is the pilot
Cotton commented:
that was the first video, but it wasn't the pilot for the network. BIG difference.
Adam commented:
This is NOT the pilot. The pilot was a short christmas card featuring Jesus and Santa Claus in a fight to the death over who should take more credit for Christmas. It is from that episode that arose the inspiration for the song "What Would Brian Boitano Do?"