Two things had become evident to me. Number One, the show had been good, but suffered from too-short episodes that prevented more in-depth storylines, and from frustrating toying with almost-adult themes. There could be so much more done with this team of characters and setting, but the show had been constantly trying to appeal to a much younger audience and so it balanced on the border between saccharine and mature. Some of the episodes touched cults, addiction, espionage, self-fulfilling prophecies. But then it all reset again, never quite reaching the level of "The Rescuers". There is so much more to be done with this setting and this team of characters! But that was not the reason for this here thing.

 

That had been the Number Two: I was noticing the differences in various animation shops' handling of the characters, and quickly realized that Walt Disney Animation Japan was reading the model sheets differently from the rest. The model sheets for these characters do not list the real structures; just the sample poses. That apparently was not enough for many of the animators, and some shots in the show display rather bizarre anatomies and movement. But someone at WDA Japan had known how to parse the sheets and constructed the motion in a much freer way. When I noticed that they were clever enough to put the hip joint on the rodents where it belonged, avoiding the model sheet's trap of giving them shortened legs, a thought crept up my spine: I could probably make them more realistic critters, instead of cute cartoons.

I did not rush into attempting it. I had actually tried to redesign the RR team some years before, and discovered then that Monty and especially Gadget were insurmountable obstacles. Monty was too cartoony. Gadget was much worse: too humanoid. Puzzlingly humanoid in a team of mice. Unless I could somehow convey the same character in a mouse, it all would be wasted work.

 

I combed the Web in search of more production art, possibly early sketches of the team, or alternative model sheets. I found none; presumably they are hidden in the same place as the original reels of the show. What I found was a lot of fan speculation, and a lengthy interview of Tad Stones. And in it, someone had asked the same question: why was Gadget more humanoid than the rest of the team?

Stones' answer made something click in my head. Stones had replied that from his point of view, Gadget was never meant to be humanoid. The odd look resulted from production constraints and some technical snafus, like the color process making her look skin-colored, instead of original off-white. But she was designed as a mouse; she simply got filtered through the labyrinths of offshore animation. So there was no reason I could not make her a mouse.

 

I took a piece of paper, quickly doodled a mouse face in one corner, and Gadget from the show in the other, and set out to find a recognizable compromise. Within fifteen minutes, I got this:

 

So I drew a couple of sketches for the complete team lineup, and made an illustration in color pencil. That's the one at the top of this page.

 

The personalities stay almost exactly the same, since the team works so well. Chip is the motivator, the athlete and the would-be detective (although his actual logic and attention are surpassed by Gadget's, he has far more drive and focus). The Rangers are his passion; without him, there would be no focus to their activities. Dale is the relaxed dude, who relies on his supernatiral luck more than on any skills; he still loves comic books, science fiction, and sweets. He has picked up skateboarding and thinks he is cool. He also copilots the Ranger Wing. He is capable of the same acrobatics as Chip, but is less fit, because he is lazy and eats too much sugar; without him, the team would lose a lot of levity and lucky chaos he induces. Gadget is the quiet mechanical genius, who can make things work, and provide the scientific expertise in investigations; she is fit and agile, but not particularly physically able. But she is much more without realizing it herself - without her, the team would fall apart. She is the glue that holds the other four together. Monty is the strong man and fatherly guy; he pilots the Ranger Wing, cooks, and provides a strong arm when it is needed; he is not too agile, but amply compensates with raw force. Without him the team would lose their raw power and strong back. Zipper is still the silent bug with a big heart, the indispensable lookout and messenger.

 

I had continued to explore the idea in warm-up sketching sessions and exploratory doodles. This redesigned Ranger team could tackle more serious things, in a world where humans had not been happily oblivious oafs never noticing mice flying about in tiny helicopters. In fact, one of the most obvious themes for a project set up in this version of CDRR would be the interaction of Mouseverse with the human world. You'd have bold young generation like the Rangers that is gradually losing all caution, and the old guard grumbling about it, and much more nefarious human villains than the bumbling mad professor. I'd relocate the Rangers headquarters out of the park (right, no one ever notices the lit-up runway on a very prominent singleton tree) to a more remote place like the airplane junkyard. I tried to imagine what would Gadget's workshop really be, and how would a sensibly designed Ranger Wing work. I also did some test illustrations just for fun. What follows is the bulk of the work done for this concept.

 

 

In the show, Gadget pilots the plane and the Wing, but that makes her almost a super-character: she can do everything the others can, and with more motivation she'd probably be able to do the whole team's work! I'd rather have Monty be the pilot, taking advantage of his classical pilot's helmet. Chip and Dale would alternate as copilots, especially Dale - that would give him a more essential role in the team, and a good deal of careless flying! Gadget can focus on building things. It's not that she is a bad pilot, she is just a bit scatter-minded...