#jumpstart languages

A tumblr blog focused on animation smears from various media once recieved a submission of a frame from JumpStart Languages. As it turns out, the post was submitted by the actual animator of the scene in question, Tracy Reynolds (credited as Tracy Wagner in JumpStart Languages).

Assorted animation smears from the JumpStart Advanced series and JumpStart Languages.

JumpStart Langauges contains a hidden screen of the French pavillion (top), which contains some differences from how it appears in-game (bottom), indicating that this was a temporary appearance of the location during development. Most noticeably, the toolbar at the bottom of the screen is reused from a previous game, JumpStart Artist, with a grayscale globe pasted over top of the last icon, which presumably was only used as a placeholder.

Concept art created for JumpStart Languages created by Tracy Reynolds, featuring a squirrel character that never made it into the game (but was possibly an early design for the character Roxy Raccoon).

The first two images here are concept art for JumpStart Languages created by Tracy Reynolds. These depict an unused squirrel design and early designs for Roxy Raccoon, whose final design can be seen in the bottom image. Although the squirrel seems unrelated to Roxy at first, it is possibly an even earlier design for her. One of the squirrel designs includes overalls and a straw hat, which is shared by some of Roxy's earlier designs. Raccoons and various species of squirrels are also both native to America, the country that Roxy is from and represents.

Some of the 2D JumpStart games make use of smear frames. This refers to an animation technique that involves purposefully stretching, blurring or multiplying objects to give a sense of quick fluid movement. Pictured above are assorted smear frames from the JumpStart Advanced series and JumpStart Languages.

JumpStart Languages comes with several American, Mexican, French and Japanese recipes intended to be printed out and made at home.