Illustrator William Stout recently unveiled eight pieces of art from a Jurassic Park cartoon tie-in that never was.

Back in the '90s, the heyday of the animated continuation of a major action blockbuster, Stout worked on designing an animated series based on the recently released Jurassic Park. While he'd done some consulting on the film, he describes the idea of the animated series on his blog:

This was not going to be a kiddy show (although kids of all ages, including myself, could enjoy it). They wanted the show to be a mature prime time series with top writers and state-of-the-art television animation augmented with quite a bit of CG animation. Universal Cartoon Studios wanted a "graphic novel look" to the series. I came in, showed my portfolio and was hired. We made a trailer to communicate the look and feel of the series, also showing how we would combine computer animation with traditional animation. All we needed was [Steven] Spielberg's approval.

That approval was not forthcoming, a move that Stout attributes to Spielberg's fatigue with the mountains of Jurassic Park merchandise that the film spawned. Still, these eight portraits of major characters and potential action sequences give us some idea of what the show would have looked like. Stout is selling the original artwork on his site.