Animated Lives On!

[formerly nortagem]

If true, Blackout will be mine! :dclol

[Liege Evilmus]

To Liege, copying simple line art has nothing to do with what goes into making a transformer. Each one is a brilliant little piece of engineering, and show accuracy is important in this case because it's a very exaggerated style. Proportions aren't necessarily taken into consideration when you design a character in this style, so having the figures look as good as they do even though they're not 100% accurate is a huge step for Hasbro.

 

As far as it being nothing new, the only line I've ever seen that's more accurate is Cybertron, where the character models were built off of the toys, and that show was absolutely terrible.

 

Your comment about copying line art is utterly disrespectful and you need to learn some appreciation for what it takes to make these little plastic toys. I'd like to see you design something in 3 dimensions out of a 2-d picture that can physically change shape like a puzzle into something else and not have it look like trash. Show some respect, if not for the hobby or the company, then for the sculptors who work their asses off trying to please kids and adults who they already know are going to talk crap as soon as they see the prototype.

 

First off, I'm not saying anything about the transformations, alot were very inventive.

 

As for show acurate toys, I offer

Beast Wars from season 2 on save for about 3 figures.

RID(concerning the new figures)

Armada

Energon

Cybertron.

 

Now reguardless of the shows or the storied(which on alot of levels I enjoyed AEC better, as each series had progression on multiple levels, and we didn't need a toddler on a My Little Pony to let us know the Decepticons were bad). These figures were pretty much dead on.

 

Hell in Energon they even went as far as to add the slide pads for the hands. Now reguardless of the stories being good or not these figures where very detailed, as well as show acurate.

 

And please, don't tell me what I know and don't know about 2D and 3D molding. I've worked for 13+ years in avdertising and have forgotten more about imaging than most people will ever know. I've also worked as an a freelance artist, and an art teacher. I've drawn, painted, writen, carved, welded and sculpted. All of it without computer aid no less!

 

I've done all this starting as a novice, with no formal training and have produced many more detailed items in many different media, all of which surpasses the detail in these figures and designs.

 

So don't you even think to assume what I should appreciate, as you have no idea what I know about :stone

 

So that said, 25 years of toys on the shelf and the DVDs to compair them against give my statment plenty of levity.

 

The art style is lazy, and that translates to they toys image reguardless of how it transforms or whatever the contents of the show are. In many ways, Animated is a step down concerning TFs.

[Robimus Prime]

Ratchet, is one of the originals still warming shelves. Hopefully, this will be his Cybertonian mode!

[knuclear200x]

so whats Wingblade optimus prime? a twopack cybertron rerelease for the universe line?

[GamecockPrime]

Just a sidenote to Liege and Wookie above, I don't know jack about how to make transformers. What I do know is storytelling. Animated has the best storyline since Beast Wars for one reason and one reason alone: when the characters say things to each other, they actually make sense! The dubbed over japanese transformers shows, like most other dubbed over japanese cartoons made for small children, suck because there are parts that just don't make sense in the translation. I can live with some simplified themes for the kids, God knows we had plenty of shows like that in the G1 series, but I think the "laziness" that Liege mentioned above referring to the design of the Animated characters, could just as well be a reference to the writing for the American version of the AEC series.

As an aside, I personally loved both the Animated and Cybertron character designs. Each works for each series. Cybertron has awesome designs and Animated has great homages to previous character incarnations. I really wish there was a combination of the two.

[Liege Evilmus]

I've been saying for a while now that a true Has/Tak joint series would be welcomed.

 

Japan has a tendency of writing long liniar progressive stories. The characters however are very shallow. Americans can make a character witty and develope it as well, but suck at liniar story telling.

 

Case in point, the first season of Beast Wars, awesome, but realy didn't go anywhere. If season 2 and 3 didn't start focusing on an objective, the show would not be as warmly remembered as it is.

 

Japan can't be left alone cause well, if you do you get Freefall666's sig or even worse http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At-pfAFUldE

 

What I'd do is merge American writen characters and dialog working in a Japanesse style plot.

 

Besides hating the art work, the story telling (not the character interaction) just didn't go anyplace. Animated season 1&2 would fit into 5 episodes of any past series.

 

I will go one step further though and say even though the character interaction was well written, what they did to alot of the rehashed namesakes is unexcusable. Yes they may have sucked in other series as rehashes too, but that doesn't make it either excusable or OK.

 

I don't say any of this from the sidelines like people who bought 1 movie toy and say the whole line sucks. I have the figures, I have the DVDs. I'm talking from the position of one who did give it a earnest try.

 

I'm not going to knock someone for liking the line, same as I won't knock anyone who hates the movie line, or any other. On that note, I'm not going to be knocked myself for having my own oppinion on the line and series.

 

So back to the point of show acuracy, well yeah, it's not that hard to sculpt flat pannels, and I look forward to the detailed characters of the movie line returning as they are more detailed even if unorthodox.

[coyotepack]

Personally I believe some rumors are made by the companies, to scare loyal fans into going out in a panic to buy the products, believeing the toys will bought up and never sold again, only to find the rumor was completely false and they spent their money early, regating it will wondering why their electic bill has expired. :bump

[Zonker]

I aint bought a transformer over the legends line for a while now. Mainly due to lack of funds but then again, funds should be starting up again soon. Someone saying that the line is canceled definitely falls under the bogus heading mainly due to one thing and one thing only: the third season starting in two saturdays...

[wookieearmada]

I, too, have worked in various artistic media and from that experience I still have to disagree that saying the sculpting of line art is simple, especially when the line art relies so heavily on the fact that it's 2-dimensional. Graffiti and anime-inspired designs rarely work as well in 3-d as they do in 2-d and I think it takes great talent to make it work. To say you made something with more detail isn't saying much, as you don't have to mass-produce your item.

 

But saying the art style is lazy is like saying hieroglyphics were lazy. It's a style that's representative of the times and should not be held to the standards of realism or even graphical style of its forebears. I like the style and understand that many don't, but I can't agree with it being called lazy without good reason.

 

I do very much agree about storyline vs. characterization. I think the Japanese style of storytelling is vastly superior to what you can find in most animated entertainment over here, but the dialogue is usually pretty terrible. American writers developing dialogue fora Japanese plot line would be a great idea, although I have so far enjoyed the story for Animated so far. It's not spectacular and definitely lacks the depth of say Justice League Unlimited, but it's a lot of fun and something I can enjoy watching with my nephews any time.

 

Still not seeing how Animated is a step down, however.

[Rodimus VTS]

I've been saying for a while now that a true Has/Tak joint series would be welcomed.

 

Japan has a tendency of writing long linear progressive stories. The characters however are very shallow. Americans can make a character witty and develop it as well, but suck at linear story telling.

 

Well I think that if they had comic book writers write series then they could be both linear, and have our classic American character wit, and character development. Now I know most comic lines are interesting only in short story arcs of 6-12 issues. However over the last several years comic companies have been trying to progress smoothly from one strong story arc to another. So you have less stand alone issues, and more that become grouped into graphic novel collections later on. Many times they'll even arc the stories over several different titles so you get the different character's perspective on the situation. A couple of great examples of this is the Rann/ Thanagarian War, and Infinite Crisis from DC, Marvel's Civil War, & World War Hulk. Then for our favorite giant robots you've got Infiltration, Escalation, Storm Bringer, Devastation, Revelation, Maximum Dinobots, and All Hail Megatron all of which link into the Spotlight series at one point or another. These are just a few examples of how Comic book writers make great series of comics and I think that if American animation studios would tap into this they'd be much better for it.