I’ve been working on screencapping for a couple of projects, and going through Cry Uncle I noticed something intresting that I think has shown up in other episodes too, the cylinder behind Ray:
As we know there’s nothing on the standard Real GhostbustersProton Pack design that has this element… and we’ve also seen with the series, ranging from the design of Ecto-1 to the PKE, is that at times the equipment drops in detail because of poor animation, varies in details due to differing animation teams, has elements move as different artists depict the equipment… and in some cases, very rarely… we see an old variation of the design from the original pre-production process pop up… one of Ecto-1 appears in Lost and Foundry for instance.
Well, going through Killerwatt, I suddenly saw that cylinder again… and a lot else. Of the varient designs we’ve seen pop up in the cartoon over the years, this has to be the closest to resembling the original movie props:
Awesome Screen Caps. I’d seen these before and I always enjoyed catching them. I don’t have screen caps for it and I don’t know if it’s been mentioned but did you see the animation goofs with the ghost traps in Fright at the opera. That episode had a few boo boos in it but the one I saw the most was the the ghost traps would sometimes be completely yellow instead of being black and yellow striped. This isn’t the only episode that this but it was very noticible in this one.
I vaguely recall those goofs… all in all it was a badly animated episode.
I’ve got a few more screen grabs I’ve noticed of this Pack design varient (which I’m going to call the “Killerwatt Varient” from now on), although most of them are from when the Ghostbuster is facing front, and as such the Booster Tube and thinner Ion Arm only appeared because they were less obvious than the whole design as seen in the second image I posted. I’ll be posting the other images after I’ve scoured through a few more episodes to see if any other instances of the varient show up.
I’d been hanging fire on posting more so that I could organise what I’d found throughout the series, but I’ll post the cliff notes:
After seeing this design crop up in more episodes, and in one of the pre-production model sheets of Ecto-1, I’m able to conclude it was an older iteration of the Proton Pack and Proton Gun, cropping up occasionally because the animation teams on those specific episodes used some of the drawings that hadn’t been removed from circulation.
Killerwatt is the best episode for seeing what the Proton Gun looks like (although there’s also some good material in the shot of back of Ecto-1 in the production gallery, The Bird of Kildarby and A Hard Knight’s Day). This varient of the Proton Pack also appears in Apocalypse-- What, Now?, Camping it Up right at the start of the episode and The Man Who Never Reached Home (there’s another episode but I forget the name – I’ll be posting the images soon). It also appears in the storyboards for Don’t Forget the Motor City and Mrs Roger’s Neighbourhood if I’m not mistaken.
The main difference in the design of the Pack (beyond the gun), are the thinner, more triangular Ion Arm, the Booster Tube, and the box beneath the Booster Tube (replacing the Booster Frame, the diagonal inset in the box is how the artist has interpretted the blue hose that ran up to the Ion Arm) .
The reverse-view of the back of the Pack shows up more often, where you’ll see an unexplained Booster Tube appear like the image of Ray at the top of the thread.
You see to me, the best part of this is that if we take the measurements of the proton gun as being the same as the film, we could come up with the closest thing to accurate measurements for the pack from the series .
There were plenty in which shots like the one from Cry Uncle popped up, but there’s only so much reference you can gather of a few boxes and a Booster Tube from that angle that are worth posting.
Still, I’d be intrigued to see if there was anything significant I’d missed that was in your gallery. It should be relatively easy to recover the password.
