Gary Rydstrom was a sound designer at Pixar who made the move into directing with the short film Lifted. His first feature film was set to be Newt, a romantic comedy about the last two blue-footed newts on the planet, expected to mate but finding that they hate each other. Sadly, it seems that he could never quite get the story working, and the film was officially cancelled earlier this year. Confirming this dead-and-staying-dead status is a new gallery of concept art that offers a cruelly tantalising taste of what the film would have looked like. It’d be insane to think Disney Pixar were sharing this now because they were looking to generate interest in the film. The publication of these images seem to ring a resounding death knell, even more certain than most cancellations at the house of mouse where projects are shelved, reworked and shelved again for decades on end without a single piece of concept art ever seeing the light of day.

Here are some of Newt pieces.