Decades before the world recognized the green ogre with the Scottish accent, a completely different creature existed within the archives of DreamWorks. This early version was not the friendly giant audiences eventually saw in theaters but a grotesque anomaly that remained hidden from the public for over twenty-five years.
In 1996, a small production team created a short animation test titled “Shrek – I Feel Good” to determine the technical direction of the film. For decades, this footage was considered “lost media” and became a highly sought-after artifact by animation historians who wished to see the original concept in motion. The eventual discovery of this clip revealed a bizarre and gritty version of the franchise that the studio ultimately abandoned.
A Monstrous Design
The animation test features a character design that bears almost no resemblance to the final 2001 film version. This early Shrek appears lumpy, dark, and visually disturbing rather than appealing. The character model was designed to look massive, standing approximately 2.1 meters or 7 feet tall. He possesses a mouth full of jagged, rotting teeth and strangely stretched skin. In the thirty-second clip, Shrek does not speak but instead dances to the 1965 James Brown hit “I Feel Good.”
The scene takes place in a dark, stone-walled alleyway at night. As the music plays, a mugger character drops from the sky to attack the ogre. Shrek responds without breaking his rhythm and knocks the attacker into the night sky with a single motion. The visual style is notably grim and lacks the bright, colorful aesthetic that DreamWorks later adopted for the final production.
The Failure of Liquid Hips
DreamWorks commissioned this specific test to determine if they should use motion capture technology for the entire feature film. The studio hired a company called Propel to produce the sequence using live actors wearing sensors. The resulting animation proved problematic for the studio executives. The motion capture data mapped onto the large, deformed body of the ogre resulted in movement that looked disjointed and rubbery.
The animators on the team referred to the glitchy, undulating movement as “liquid hips” because the character’s weight did not seem grounded in reality. Jeffrey Katzenberg and the production team viewed the clip and immediately decided against the motion capture technique. Consequently, the studio shifted production entirely to keyframe animation which allowed for the exaggerated and controlled movements seen in the final movie.
Recovering the Lost Tape
For a long time, the only evidence of this test existed in low-quality screenshots and unverified rumors on internet forums. The search for the footage intensified over the years as interest in the history of computer graphics grew. In April 2023, the full footage finally surfaced publicly. A user uploaded a video to YouTube that contained a recording of a demo reel from the original animators.
The upload confirmed the odd proportions and the specific dance choreography that had been rumored for years. The video details exactly how the early grotesque concept art by Barry Jackson was translated into early computer graphics. This discovery closed a massive gap in the history of the film’s production and allowed the public to see the footage exactly as it happened in the mid-nineties.
Decades before the world met the friendly ogre, a monstrous version existed in secret.
In 1996, DreamWorks created the lost "I Feel Good" test tape.
Hidden for twenty-five years, this footage reveals a dark, gritty origin that the studio buried…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/hvUZIHjuPb
— Fascinating True Stories (@FascinatingTrue) December 3, 2025