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

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Screencap from the short.

Status: Lost

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

Origins

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.

This short was about an Elvis Presley impersonator, (originally three impersonators, before it was shortened to one due to time constraints), who would later become Johnny Bravo.

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 hairstyle, name, physical appearance and personality.

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

Resurfacing

Despite the success it spawned, 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). Or the recently found "Billy and mandy in trepanation of the skull and YOU"

The only footage that has ever been made available was a short, mute clip in a documentary of the Johnny Bravo first season DVD.