Forget the blurry ones that popped up online a few days ago, we now have the first “official” image from the Cartoon Network’s brand new Thundercats cartoon.

And what’s more is we’ve got some interesting info after Thundercats producer Ethan Spaulding had a chat with MTV and spilled some beans on the intriguing reboot.

Up first he discussed how the creative team approached the redesign of the iconic characters…

We decided that it would be best to keep the core character traits of all the characters — specifically their colors — so at first glance you can tell who each one of them is. We really kept that core spirit of all the characters and just updated them with a little more realistic armor, and some of the ’80s aspects — like Lion-O’s exposed midriff. The original designs are great, but the world we have going on in this story, we had to fit our designs to that story, so that was our overall impetus.

He then spoke of the “anime” vibe that the new show is laced with…

The original show was done in Japan, and many people probably don’t know that. A lot of the artists went on to be in Studio Ghibli, and worked on [Hayao] Miyazaki’s first film. So “ThunderCats” does have a footprint in Japanese animation. We’re kind of going back and honoring that in the new series. I was always a huge fan of the original show and I love the Japanese animation and what they can do, so we’re really going back to the roots…

It’s more realistic, more real-world palette. The Japanese animations are great. The colors are keyed a lot different than the American animation, and there’s a little bit more variety going on. We’re fans of that style. You get a little more attention paid to the lighting in this show, the sense of atmosphere, and the scope of the project. We’re going for a movie feel, and hopefully we’re achieving that.

And finally, Tygra, the boring dude from the original cartoon is going to be more interesting this time around…

Everyone wants to know about Tygra, but that’s sort of story-specific. I can’t reveal too much. Basically, we wanted to make him cooler than he was. The consensus was that he was the boring guy of the old show, so we wanted to make him more interesting and gave him another dimension. But don’t worry — he still has the whip. People were wondering where the whip was at one point, but it’s on his belt.

Photo courtesy of collider.com

Related posts:

1. Thundercats Ho! Thundercats Gets New Animated Series
2. Star Of Hawaii Five-O Reboot Admits He Never Watched The Original Show
3. Larry Kenney Back To Voice Lion-O In New Thundercats Cartoon
4. Wonder Woman TV Producer Not Sure About Reboot
5. Reboot Alert! TV Show Alias?