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Should Hasbro commission an adult Transformers cartoon?


Goktimus Prime

Adult-oriented Transformers Animation  

24 members have voted

  1. 1. Should Hasbro make an adult-oriented TF cartoon?

    • I'd love to see an adult-oriented Classicsverse cartoon
      11
    • I'd love to see an adult-oriented TF cartoon but it doesn't have to be Classicsverse
      10
    • I think Transformers cartoons should remain being primarily made for kids
      1
    • Other (please specify)
      2


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I vote yes, though I know Hasbro would never finance it. What I would like to see are several select episodes of G1 completely redone in CG using for the most part the original audio track. When I say several select episodes I am really referring to 90% of Season 1, 10% of season 2, TFTAM, and about 7% of season 3

 

Why? Those stories have been told, the episodes exist. Now if we had a situation like much of 60s Dr. Who where the episodes were lost, I could see this, but why invest all the effort into simply refreshing the look of some G1 episodes which are readily available at Walmart and on Netflix? I prefer traditional cel animation - making CGI versions of those episodes wouldn't be improving anything in my book. Except maybe removing some of the animation errors, I admit.

Really, why not? The animation of these has not aged well, a facelift for many fan-favorite eps would be fantastic IMO. Not to mention being able to use the MP's and classicsverse figures as well as concepts for classicsverse figures for many of the characters that have not gotten their updated forms yet as the main models for these re-animated eps., I feel it would be an interesting undertaking. So what if these stories have been told before? Will that stop Superman from having his origin story beaten into our heads yet again with the upcoming man of steel film? No, no it won't. Take into account that some of the best-written cartoons were also the most poorly animated (just how many starscream's did Megatron have under his command again?) And yeah..... needs a facelift. While I would rather see something new as far as an adult tf animation, since I don't see anyone taking comic stories and making direct-to-dvd movies anytime soon (smartest move dc ever did) or any real G1 revival with a full on new classics/MPverse series, re-animating a few old eps seems like the best option as far as "what's most likely to happen"

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They already did that back in the early 90s. It sucked.

 

 

They already did that back in the early 90s. It sucked.

 

G2 and the cube??

 

 

Too late :P And yes, G2 and the cube.

 

Hey, it's CG :shrug

 

I also don't think it would be a good idea. to take those 1980's TF G-1 episodes & replace the hand drawn animation with CGI. because it'll still be stories we saw & this would be a waste of man power+talent.

 

going the dreamwave route where they do a alternate G-1 is the best route for a newer TF G-1 cartoon CGI series & toy line.

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I vote yes, though I know Hasbro would never finance it. What I would like to see are several select episodes of G1 completely redone in CG using for the most part the original audio track. When I say several select episodes I am really referring to 90% of Season 1, 10% of season 2, TFTAM, and about 7% of season 3

 

Why? Those stories have been told, the episodes exist. Now if we had a situation like much of 60s Dr. Who where the episodes were lost, I could see this, but why invest all the effort into simply refreshing the look of some G1 episodes which are readily available at Walmart and on Netflix? I prefer traditional cel animation - making CGI versions of those episodes wouldn't be improving anything in my book. Except maybe removing some of the animation errors, I admit.

Really, why not? The animation of these has not aged well, a facelift for many fan-favorite eps would be fantastic IMO. Not to mention being able to use the MP's and classicsverse figures as well as concepts for classicsverse figures for many of the characters that have not gotten their updated forms yet as the main models for these re-animated eps., I feel it would be an interesting undertaking. So what if these stories have been told before? Will that stop Superman from having his origin story beaten into our heads yet again with the upcoming man of steel film? No, no it won't. Take into account that some of the best-written cartoons were also the most poorly animated (just how many starscream's did Megatron have under his command again?) And yeah..... needs a facelift. While I would rather see something new as far as an adult tf animation, since I don't see anyone taking comic stories and making direct-to-dvd movies anytime soon (smartest move dc ever did) or any real G1 revival with a full on new classics/MPverse series, re-animating a few old eps seems like the best option as far as "what's most likely to happen"

 

I could get behind using CG to correct the animation errors, but that's it. The animation style is part of the charm to me. I love cel animation.

 

And its not retelling that's the issue - it's the fact that it would be the exact same show, only with CGI. A G1 remake with CGI or improved cel animation would be one thing (and based on my dislike of the the neoG1 comics, not a thing I'd like) but I don't see the point in just taking the original shows and completely redoing them. If they're going to go to the effort to do say 20 half hour cartoons, they should at least have some new material in them. Recreating the original shows with CGI would be an interesting fan project, but utterly pointless for Hasbro to commission.

 

And yes, if we ever got a G1 reboot show, it should use the newer designs.

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I vote yes, though I know Hasbro would never finance it. What I would like to see are several select episodes of G1 completely redone in CG using for the most part the original audio track. When I say several select episodes I am really referring to 90% of Season 1, 10% of season 2, TFTAM, and about 7% of season 3

 

Why? Those stories have been told, the episodes exist. Now if we had a situation like much of 60s Dr. Who where the episodes were lost, I could see this, but why invest all the effort into simply refreshing the look of some G1 episodes which are readily available at Walmart and on Netflix? I prefer traditional cel animation - making CGI versions of those episodes wouldn't be improving anything in my book. Except maybe removing some of the animation errors, I admit.

Really, why not? The animation of these has not aged well, a facelift for many fan-favorite eps would be fantastic IMO. Not to mention being able to use the MP's and classicsverse figures as well as concepts for classicsverse figures for many of the characters that have not gotten their updated forms yet as the main models for these re-animated eps., I feel it would be an interesting undertaking. So what if these stories have been told before? Will that stop Superman from having his origin story beaten into our heads yet again with the upcoming man of steel film? No, no it won't. Take into account that some of the best-written cartoons were also the most poorly animated (just how many starscream's did Megatron have under his command again?) And yeah..... needs a facelift. While I would rather see something new as far as an adult tf animation, since I don't see anyone taking comic stories and making direct-to-dvd movies anytime soon (smartest move dc ever did) or any real G1 revival with a full on new classics/MPverse series, re-animating a few old eps seems like the best option as far as "what's most likely to happen"

 

I could get behind using CG to correct the animation errors, but that's it. The animation style is part of the charm to me. I love cel animation.

 

And its not retelling that's the issue - it's the fact that it would be the exact same show, only with CGI. A G1 remake with CGI or improved cel animation would be one thing (and based on my dislike of the the neoG1 comics, not a thing I'd like) but I don't see the point in just taking the original shows and completely redoing them. If they're going to go to the effort to do say 20 half hour cartoons, they should at least have some new material in them. Recreating the original shows with CGI would be an interesting fan project, but utterly pointless for Hasbro to commission.

 

And yes, if we ever got a G1 reboot show, it should use the newer designs.

 

Boom. Perfectly said.

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IMHO,TF Prime is a adult Aimed TF cartoon series.

It's not. Listen to the DVD/BR audio commentary. The show is primarily marketed at kids. That's not to say that TF Prime is a bad show per se... there are G1 fan elements in it for adults to enjoy, but the principal audience is kids.

 

IMO the G1 Marvel comics (especially the UK comics) was the best written Transfomers story, followed by Beast Wars which I consider to be the best written TF TV series. That story was written at different levels to engage kids and adults. You had action and comedy for kids to enjoy, but it also had a serious running storyline, world building, a consequential war (TFPrime killed off Cliffjumper to mature the story and show that it's a consequential war, and that's cool, but look at Beast Wars - a LOT of their characters died! Only three Predacons and four Maximals survived at the end of the series... everyone else got slaughtered), scifi-fantasy (e.g. Megatron disrupting the time-space continuum), it delved into the existing G1/G2 continuity family, and some eps dealt with heavy issues, like Maximal No More (honour and shame), Code of Hero (self-sacrifice), Transmutate (prejudice, right to life)... the character of Rampage encapsulated the tragic tormented villain etc. It had well fleshed out characters and not just a bunch of archetypes running around.

 

Also, remember that the key thing that drives a story is CHARACTER CHANGE - the protagonist(s)'s journey. Look at Scorponok in Marvel G1; started off as being a cruel and merciless tyrant, but changed to become someone who genuinely cared about the needs of the Decepticons under his command. The character explored the burden of command - do you choose to do something that you think is right but unpopular with your people, or do what's popular despite believing it's not in your people's best interests? How often do we see our own politicians playing the popularity game and making decisions that will make voters like them, rather than what's _really_ in the interests of the country or people? Sometimes you have to make the difficult decisions -- the ones that people will hate you for but you know is the right thing to do (like what Batman did at the end of the Dark Knight). Or look at Beast Wars... Cheetor began as this immature kid desperately trying to prove his worth in Season 1. By Season 2 he had resolved a bit more; still youthful and naive, but not quite as much of a hot shot. By Season 3 he'd become a more stoic character trying to prove himself in a more 'tough guy' kind of way - what Rattrap called "Cyber-Puberty." Then by Beast Machines he'd grown out of his immaturity and become a competent rational agent, but was doubted by his peers because of his youth and relative lack of experience. Much like when you've just graduated and you're having trouble finding work because although you have the qualifications, potential employers doubt you due to your lack of experience. And your desperate to prove yourself by gaining experience. We can see this in the leadership debacle between Cheetor and Optimus Primal.

 

Take any of the Transformers from Animated or Prime... how many of them, by the latest episode, have changed to become different characters from when they started? Perhaps Prowl, but most of his development seemed to have occured before the timeline of the series and was told in flashbacks... rather than unfolding in 'real time' before our eyes. Sari probably experienced the most character change, and she isn't even really a proper Transformer! (there's certainly no toy of her!) I'm not a fan of TF stories that focus more on developing HUMANS over Transformers, because then the Transformers become more like set pieces than real characters. The Bay movies were pretty bad in this regard... they felt more like the Adventures of Sam & Friends, and the Autobots were like his accessories. (-_-)

 

I could get behind using CG to correct the animation errors, but that's it. The animation style is part of the charm to me. I love cel animation.

 

And its not retelling that's the issue - it's the fact that it would be the exact same show, only with CGI. A G1 remake with CGI or improved cel animation would be one thing (and based on my dislike of the the neoG1 comics, not a thing I'd like) but I don't see the point in just taking the original shows and completely redoing them. If they're going to go to the effort to do say 20 half hour cartoons, they should at least have some new material in them. Recreating the original shows with CGI would be an interesting fan project, but utterly pointless for Hasbro to commission.

 

And yes, if we ever got a G1 reboot show, it should use the newer designs.

I agree. Like using Classicsverse/CHUGUR designs and doing a reboot (or continuing in the future of where G1 ended, like what Beast Wars did; maybe set it between the end of G2 and before BW?).

 

I wouldn't mind a G1 "Special Edition" that digitally fixed up errors (like FIRRIB :P ;)). But I don't see the point of doing a full remake in CGI. Some things from G1 would be outdated anyway... TF Prime is a lot more contemporary with characters like Miko and Rav going about with a mobile phone and laptop computer etc. Heh... the episode where Prowl goes online in search for help and hooks up with Chip Chase's computer... that was _before_ the public internet existed - could you imagine if he tried to do that now?

 

Prowl>Battle computer is down... can anybody help me?

cH405_KiNg>stfu

maelstrom86>lol, ye

ladiesman217>asl?

urfrend>Congratulations, you've won a holiday!

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I vote yes, though I know Hasbro would never finance it. What I would like to see are several select episodes of G1 completely redone in CG using for the most part the original audio track. When I say several select episodes I am really referring to 90% of Season 1, 10% of season 2, TFTAM, and about 7% of season 3

 

Why? Those stories have been told, the episodes exist. Now if we had a situation like much of 60s Dr. Who where the episodes were lost, I could see this, but why invest all the effort into simply refreshing the look of some G1 episodes which are readily available at Walmart and on Netflix? I prefer traditional cel animation - making CGI versions of those episodes wouldn't be improving anything in my book. Except maybe removing some of the animation errors, I admit.

Really, why not? The animation of these has not aged well, a facelift for many fan-favorite eps would be fantastic IMO. Not to mention being able to use the MP's and classicsverse figures as well as concepts for classicsverse figures for many of the characters that have not gotten their updated forms yet as the main models for these re-animated eps., I feel it would be an interesting undertaking. So what if these stories have been told before? Will that stop Superman from having his origin story beaten into our heads yet again with the upcoming man of steel film? No, no it won't. Take into account that some of the best-written cartoons were also the most poorly animated (just how many starscream's did Megatron have under his command again?) And yeah..... needs a facelift. While I would rather see something new as far as an adult tf animation, since I don't see anyone taking comic stories and making direct-to-dvd movies anytime soon (smartest move dc ever did) or any real G1 revival with a full on new classics/MPverse series, re-animating a few old eps seems like the best option as far as "what's most likely to happen"

 

I could get behind using CG to correct the animation errors, but that's it. The animation style is part of the charm to me. I love cel animation.

 

And its not retelling that's the issue - it's the fact that it would be the exact same show, only with CGI. A G1 remake with CGI or improved cel animation would be one thing (and based on my dislike of the the neoG1 comics, not a thing I'd like) but I don't see the point in just taking the original shows and completely redoing them. If they're going to go to the effort to do say 20 half hour cartoons, they should at least have some new material in them. Recreating the original shows with CGI would be an interesting fan project, but utterly pointless for Hasbro to commission.

 

And yes, if we ever got a G1 reboot show, it should use the newer designs.

 

Boom. Perfectly said.

 

My humble fan opinion below:

 

Their are far too many Transformers character designs jammed into a 1984 thru 1986 TF cartoon episode. the CGI cost alone to CGI all those characters in a singular episode/series would not make it worth it.

 

Even to try to CGI the 1986 TF movie. would cost far too much money. due to it being over loaded with Dozens/almost a hundred TF character designs.

 

I'd rather see something similar to Dreamwave TF G-1. Where it's G-1 But it's in a alternate G-1 universe. sorta like a reboot of G-1 to make it take place in the present day. we could get newer generations designed TF toys in all the toy sizes. I'd prefer it be in cel drawn animation as this offers more character designs in a episode/series for cheaper money. CGI's biggest draw back if fewer character designs in a singular episode/series due to high CGI cost.

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My humble fan opinion below:

 

Their are far too many Transformers character designs jammed into a 1984 thru 1986 TF cartoon episode. the CGI cost alone to CGI all those characters in a singular episode/series would not make it worth it.

 

Even to try to CGI the 1986 TF movie. would cost far too much money. due to it being over loaded with Dozens/almost a hundred TF character designs.

That's actually a good point. CGI is much more expensive than cel animation which does limit the number of characters you can appear. The G1 cartoon was jam packed with characters because Hasbro kept on pumping out new products and demanded that Sunbow put them into the show - when and where, which is why a lot of characters just seemingly appeared out of nowhere. There wasn't time for expositions because there was so much new product that had to be introduced. And the same happened with the Marvel US comics -- Budiansky was constantly under pressure to either remove or introduce new characters; that's why they had things like Transformers The Movie for the cartoon, and the Underbase Saga for the comics -- stories where old toys that were no longer in production and being promoted by Hasbro had to be removed so that new waves of toys could be introduced. You look at the casualties in these stories, like TFTM -- Optimus Prime, Brawn, Ratchet, Ironhide, Starscream, Megatron, Skywarp, Thundercracker, Bombshell, Kickback etc. -- yeah yeah, I know some of them were rebuilt into Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge/Sweeps -- but effectively TFTM removed a lot of 1984-85 toys and replaced them with 1986 toys.

 

And that's another way to introduce new characters in a CGI show while maintaining sustainable affordability -- you need to axe certain characters before introducing new ones. That's what Beast Wars often did. Okay, let's drop Terrorsaur and Scorponok into lava - now we can introduce the two Fuzors. Aww, Dinobot's dead. Here comes Depth Charge. etc etc. That way Hasbro only had to pay Mainframe to maintain a set amount of CG models at any one time - never allowing the cast of on-screen characters to grow beyond a certain size. That's why a LOT of BW toys never saw the light of day in the cartoon -- Manterror, Bonecrusher, Razorbeast, B'Boom, Polar Claw, Insecticon, Iguanus, Wolfang, K-9, Retrax, Powerpinch, Jetstorm, Transquito, Sky Shadow, Bantor, Noctorro, Injector, Torca, Sonar, Scourge, Scarem et al. The cost of CG animation made it prohibitive.

 

With cel animation it's easy. Look at Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo -- every figure made an appearance in one form or another in those series! And the Beast Wars movie (Lio Convoy's Crisis) featured lots of characters two, including three gestalts (one reason why we didn't see Tripredacus combine in BW is because it would have been more costly). Heck, even with models that made brief appearances they would often use "cheats" to reduce costs, like their pre-Earth robot forms being covered in darkness (which made it easier for BotCon to make toys for them since we didn't get a good look at them). The Tripredacus Council were covered in darkness and we never really got to see full body shots of them. And aside from their heads and hands, their body shapes seemed relatively simple -- they certainly don't look complex enough to transform into anything. Likewise images of pre-Earth Protoform X, covered in darkness. The Ravage model was really a "retooled" Transmetal Cheetor (little wonder that Takara followed suit when they made the X-9 Ravage toy ;)) and so on. Heck, even Michael Bay got cheap in ROTF and DOTM with all those Decepticon "Protoform Warriors" running about -- which I didn't like that much because they didn't look like Transformers :( (they looked to kibble-free... at least give them Cybertronian alt mode parts (like what they did with War Within/Dark Ages, Fall of Cybertron, War for Cybertron etc.). Heck, even Transformers Prime has done the same trick -- Tailgate is just a recoloured Cliffjumper but covered in darkness to obscure it. Makeshift was just a silhouette that we saw for a few seconds; the rest of the time he looked like Wheeljack. The Zombieformers all look the same, and of course, there's a limited set of Vehicons and Insecticons which they multiply to make an army -- it's not quite like say the Junkions where there were several different models (except in the scene where they're running into the spaceships and all look the same :P). Even Hardshell was a standard Insecticon model with a modified colour scheme.

 

I'd rather see something similar to Dreamwave TF G-1. Where it's G-1 But it's in a alternate G-1 universe. sorta like a reboot of G-1 to make it take place in the present day. we could get newer generations designed TF toys in all the toy sizes. I'd prefer it be in cel drawn animation as this offers more character designs in a episode/series for cheaper money. CGI's biggest draw back if fewer character designs in a singular episode/series due to high CGI cost.

With the media-based TF lines, there seems to be a limited cast of characters. It's what happens when the Transformers are designed as show characters first, toys second. Look at Animated -- cel animated, but with a limited number of recurring characters. Mind you, Animated did have a LOT of different looking minor characters and background characters! We especially see this in some scenes on Cybertron. CG animators are less likely to go to the effort of say constructing Tracks, Beachcomber, Warpath, Grandus, Rattletrap etc. just to be used as minor characters or background characters due to the time and money required to build each model. Of course with cel animation, you just draw it in! :)

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