Saturday, July 26, 2003
TOONS, TOONS, TOONS: Just got through watching an episode of Cartoon Network's Teen Titans series, a combination of the established WB superhero style and anime. The makers of this series actually seem to be favoring the lineup from the New Teen Titans comics of the early 80s (quick review: didn't see 'em, but great word of mouth), so Robin (the Tim Drake version, via Batman:TAS) is the only sidekick you'll be getting, and as the main character with an off-series pedigree fills the leader role reasonably well. Cyborg (self-explanatory), Beast Boy (a shapeshifter), Raven (goth chick with dark, dark powers), and Starfire (an aggressively cheerful alien cutie who's also painfully awkward at times) round out the rest of the team. The accent is on the TEEN here, with intramural squabbles and whatnot, so the result is an action comedy that did the job for me.
Anyway, it works out much better than the all-CGI Spider Man series that debuted recently on MTV. The storytelling, from the episode I sampled, doesn't really seem to be too bad, but the computer animation is strictly videogame. The action scenes flash along at high-speed and are fairly slick, but when we get to scenes with regular people standing around talking (which is a little over 3/4ths of what I saw), that's when we hit the wall. First off, although it's 3D modelling all the way, the characters have drawn lines around them, a stylistic touch I found a bit distracting. Please say it with me: computer animation looks wrong when you use it to animate people. That's why Pixar makes their cartoons about toys, bugs and fish. In this case, the people have hair that stays perfectly frozen in the same position, no matter what angle the character's head is at or how hard they're shaking it...a mistake that most of the recent traditionally-animated superhero cartoons don't make. There's also the matter of the showy, constantly moving camera which worked against a lot of scenes in my opinion.
I know I'm picky; maybe I got spoiled by the Final Fantasy movie. I'm just an adherent to the idea that most of the time, technique shouldn't draw attention away from the story. Besides, in all likelihood, this show will evaporate without a trace like almost every other animated series MTV has touched with their short-attention-span-theater mentality.
(edit @ 9:32pm: some minor tweaks)
Anyway, it works out much better than the all-CGI Spider Man series that debuted recently on MTV. The storytelling, from the episode I sampled, doesn't really seem to be too bad, but the computer animation is strictly videogame. The action scenes flash along at high-speed and are fairly slick, but when we get to scenes with regular people standing around talking (which is a little over 3/4ths of what I saw), that's when we hit the wall. First off, although it's 3D modelling all the way, the characters have drawn lines around them, a stylistic touch I found a bit distracting. Please say it with me: computer animation looks wrong when you use it to animate people. That's why Pixar makes their cartoons about toys, bugs and fish. In this case, the people have hair that stays perfectly frozen in the same position, no matter what angle the character's head is at or how hard they're shaking it...a mistake that most of the recent traditionally-animated superhero cartoons don't make. There's also the matter of the showy, constantly moving camera which worked against a lot of scenes in my opinion.
I know I'm picky; maybe I got spoiled by the Final Fantasy movie. I'm just an adherent to the idea that most of the time, technique shouldn't draw attention away from the story. Besides, in all likelihood, this show will evaporate without a trace like almost every other animated series MTV has touched with their short-attention-span-theater mentality.
(edit @ 9:32pm: some minor tweaks)
|| Eric 1:32 PM#
