Well, so far, I'm impressed.  I expected it to be better, but I am relieved to find that the show is infinitely better than Armada and Energon were.  The animation is pretty good.  I enjoy anime to a degree (I was at this year's Anime Boston), but I generally prefer western animation.  I like CG stuff too.  The blend of traditional anime and CG works for me.

 

So far, I only have two problems:

 

1.  The robot forms prior to choosing alt forms.  I mean, come on.  What if Prime wanted to be the blue sports car?  It was up to everyone to choose a form they liked, right?  It's lucky, then, that their robot forms were perfectly suited for whatever alts they decided on- right down to the once superfluous wheels.

 

2.  Mouths-Especially OP's.  Creepy.  Remember the scene in Pulp Fiction where Bruce Willis' character (as a child) is greeted by Christopher Walken, and he's watching that...show?  That's what it reminds me of.  Blah.

 

This seems like it'll be a pretty good show, all in all.

ive seen a bit of armada, none of energon but when i watch that epsode on Hasbro.com. i was impressed. It was almost up to BW standered. Ph the good old days

the thing about GF compared to series like Beast Wars is the animation is premade. Even in the subbed editions the lip movement is based on what the animation calls for: the voice work is added AFTER the preliminary animation is done. Working on CGI myself I see this situation first hand. Coordinating lip motion to actual dialogue is painstakingly tough. Keyed movement to vocals is well done. especially when Megatron starts laughing and his whole body shows it. You watch Beast Wars and you can see where the animation was done based on the body movement and attitude of the voice actors. Pixar especially uses the method of "Dub/Animate/Reanimate" because they have the ability to do so. Because GF is a weekly TV series that is currently in production they have to make things fast. so they have no choice but to dub as they go.

Body movement. Body movement is well done and is up to GONZO's quality from Vandread, Nobody walks smoothly and its because of their joint structure. Well done. Transformations: The Robot modes from the very beginning were based on what the final model would be. Seeing All the pre-Alternate bots as Protoforms would have been nice but the bots were modeled after their objective: transforming. compared to beast wars where it was an object 'morph-mix' in the beginning. You see this when characters like Dinobot or the spiders transform and how mass shifted and filled in with animal body parts. these animation models were keyed specifically to become their vehicle counterparts. So animating 'protos for the first episodes would have been another strain on the engine.

A technical flaw I see clearly is that these are hollow objects, when you see bits of megatron's helmet going through his cheek or when armor plating literally passes through another is a common mistake and effect of building the polygons. You see this glitch all the time even on advanced development platforms. Even Beast Wars had issues like this (Optimal Optimus' shoulder joint passing through his arm). If these bots were built from the inside out like animated creatures such as Shrek, then there'd be a way around it. The lack of such 'depth' if you will is a cutback of the animation rendering system. By cutting down on the amount of gut to a model then you can achieve the deadline production. Thats why scenes like Supermodes and transformation sequences have such 'better' animation compared to the overall show.

 

The one thing that

 

I'm a two year rookie running on Newtek's Lightwave on this stuff so if I'm wrong just feel free to shoot me.

If this was traditional handdrawn animation Cybertronian forms would be less expencive, but sence we got GCI Cybertronain forms are out of the question.

If this was traditional handdrawn animation Cybertronian forms would be less expencive, but sence we got GCI Cybertronain forms are out of the question.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why? Last I noticed Mainframe did pre-earth forms for Beast Wars (although tto nitpick, the Autobots and Decepticons in the Ark were already looking like trucks and planes). The Japanese-and Hasbro-are just lazy  :tfmad

If this was traditional handdrawn animation Cybertronian forms would be less expencive, but sence we got GCI Cybertronain forms are out of the question.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why? Last I noticed Mainframe did pre-earth forms for Beast Wars (although tto nitpick, the Autobots and Decepticons in the Ark were already looking like trucks and planes). The Japanese-and Hasbro-are just lazy  :tfmad

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Beast Wars had less epesodes a season, and probably had a cheaper budget.

About the Arkbots, they have always had Earth vehicle kibble before Earth getting alt modes.

That doesn't make it any less stupid.  This generation of kids expects more from their cartoons.  The Maximals had different forms, at least.  They weren't dramatically different, but noticeably.

Mainframe had the premiere system of its time. In 1995, CGI on a Televised basis was heavy enough but a full TV show nuff said. CGI software is widespread now but not below $500. My Lightwave 8 is the basic package and I got lucky for $800. No s/h added. Plus the cost of the hardware to run the system pushes into six digits. Mine's well over $5,000 not including the 'freebies' I' got from the guy who built it. In addition, effects features are add on packages which can run from almost 200$ to 1,000$. and this isn't just bundles, this is individual features. In order to get a plug in that can create bullet/tracer effect, I'm looking at something between 150$ to 300$. That doesn't include upgrade expenses. What really pushes the pricetag on all of this is that for major distribution, production 'value' of the CGI is the duplication: Render Farm Software by the caseload and Hardware by the truckload all running the same file.

Oh, by the way- Hadlen: I appreciate your insight as someone who works with CGI.  There's a lot to the process I hadn't ever thought about- those flaws (which I previously failed to notice) included.

I really dont like cybertron.........extremely repetetive and awkward

 

The only alternate mode i actually appreciate is that of thundercracker since he is probably the most realistic, and is putting the whole "robots in disguise" idea into effect.... i mean how often do you see a teenage kid pull up in a parking lot with a pack of futuristic lamborghini-like cars!?!?!

 

And if Vector Prime can travel back in time...why cant he just go back and prevent the black hole from even existing....hell, he could go back and prevent the creation of Megatron and the war would never have started!!!!!! the would be a pretty crappy show mind you..:)