Integration

[BB Shockwave]

I am watching the old series now - I have seen a few episodes as a kid and knew the characters from comics, but was never really into it. Must say, the animation is superb (typical Rankin-Bass) and there are some good storylines. It has continuity, with events from old episodes popping up again. And it has established a wonderfull and strange world full of odd locations and creatures.

But... as others said, the characters often act wooden (or over-the-top like Mumm-Ra) and the whole "can't hit anyone with a weapon" restriction really hurts the combat animation. And man... I have heard about Snarf, mentioned on the same level as Wesley Crusher and Wheelie, but now I can understand why. He is like, G1 Huffer and Gears rolled into one package and crossed with Courage the Cowardly Dog. He complains, he whines, and he always worries about anything. The new version is an incredible improvement over the old Snarf.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steelgrave

I just don't like that art style. The square chins & muscles, the teeny tiny waists & huge shoulders & huge feet, the 7 foot chins. It looks ridiculous & the toys look horrible.

That's why when I saw Thundercats I was like "OH MY GOD!!!! This actually looks normal! Except for the pointy Dragonball hair it looks like my old 80's shows."

I really didn't think I'd like the new show. But I loved it! I'm really surprised.

Heh, you know... I just bought the Batman TAS Bible, written by Paul Dini. There are lots of background tidbits about how the show was created.

There, Bruce Timm, who came up with the art style, mentions how he worked on stuff like Ghostbusters and GI Joe prior to this, and always had to draw things very realistically, and over-detailed... which led to wonky animation errors and was too hard to animate. He came up with this streamlined, angular style, and the producers pushed it back, saying "it was too cartoony". Bruce only remarked here in the book that "and I always wondered about that retort, because... weren't we making a cartoon?"

Basically, I think the strongest argument against streamlined animation is that it is not realistic. But... it shouldn't be realistic, anyway! This is a cartoon!

About Animated - you might hate it, but the toys did not sell because of Hasbro's dumb marketing (releasing them half a year after the show aired), not because they were bad toys, and the cartoon was cancelled because of an argument between CN and Hasbro (who wanted to move to the Hub, and CN obviously now saw them as a rival, doing anything in their power to hurt Animated - pushing it to a late time slot, not agreeing to have it aired on the Hub, etc...) As for how unsuccessfull it was, just look at Ebay and search for the latest, animated themed Botcon set. It is already the fastest selling set for the highest prices since the Classics Seekers set... A large percentage of the TF fans love the show, in fact I see haters of the Bay movie style more often then haters of Animated.