The Energon Pub

Moonbase2 wrote:Why do they have to look so funky? Is this show just for five year olds and high teenagers?

Basically... yes. You're starting to get it.


Transformers is not an anime property. It is not about producing 'serious', laudable works of animation for the adult market. As a brand and a Hasbro product, it is based on selling toys to children.

The first time around, Hasbro let the product grow up with its original target market. The original cheap 'n' cheerful kids' cartoon gave way to comics that grew in sophistication as the readership got older. But there were no new kids, and Transformers as a profitable toyline died a death in the early Nineties.

Then Beast Wars came along as Hasbro attempted to revitalise the brand with a new direction. While there were some new fans who joined ship at that point (for whom Beast Wars was and always will be 'their' definitive version of Transformers), the majority of them continued to be the same people who had been kids ten years previously when G1 was new. Result: the show is widely recognised as the high point of TF animation - well-produced, well-written and exploring themes of character and situation that would pass right over the head of the average seven year old. Secondary result: the toyline largely bombed, because there weren't enough older fans to make up for the kids who didn't get into the show or the toys.

It took until the end of Beast Machines for Hasbro to realise that they had to re-launch the brand and target it back at a new generation of kids if they wanted it to sell. Hence the scrapping of TransTech and co-production with Takara of a new, younger version of Transformers, to be called Transformers: Armada. Hence, also, periodic reboots of the continuity for each new toyline. Last time I checked, Transformers is now one of (if not the) best-selling brands Hasbro currently produce.

Do you see where I'm driving at here? I personally think that, for all the fandom's negativity, Hasbro actually have a pretty good idea of what their older fanbase - the collector's market - likes and dislikes, and seem to be surprisingly good at picking up ideas from the fanbase at times. They seem to have a good design team who understand that they can build in homages and other hooks for the collectors even while ostensibly designing for the kids. But, at the end of the day, they have to do what sells toys, and they have to keep new kids coming into the market.

Saber Prime wrote:And insted of making crap show designs like Animated and the Movie that can never work as toys they should just make a cartoon where the animated models are toy accurate.

Saber Prime wrote:Second I don't have to see the toys to know they're phyisically impossible to make 100% show accurate. I've seen the animated models.

(Looks like microclone already said most of this, but it's something that particularly annoys me so...)

The designers said they were going for 90% show accuracy with the TFA toys. From what I've seen, it looks like they've achieved it.

OK, if we're going invoke 'realism', let's talk toys for a while. A Transformers toy is a lump of inflexible plastic a few inches high. It is subject to very severe constraints on its complexity, its detailing and its range of movement at any given joint. It would look stupid if it were 30 feet tall.

This is the mistake that Energon and Cybertron made - they based their animation models too closely on the toys, and ended up with robots that looked bulky, unmanoeuverable and inexpressive. In short, they ended up with characters that looked like 30-foot scale models of their respective toys. Unsurprisingly, they looked every bit as stupid as predicted.

As has been pointed out to you, no TF line has achieved complete toy accuracy (least of all G1!), and nor should it. As it happens, this particular line seems to get closer than most. All in all, the argument you're currently pursuing is little short of nonsensical.

Stating that you don't need to see the toys to know what they're like - or need to read a web page to know what it says, apparently - is frankly idiotic. If you're going to argue a losing position, at least try to get some solid information to back it up, rather than completely unfounded assumptions.

hellbender wrote:And there are artists out there rhat are SOOOOOO much more talented than these lazy hacks that animate for Cartoon Network. I am sick of them shovelling out this waste that they think "Is so cool" or "Will make characters fresh hip-hop whack". I only shudder to think what a transformation will look like on that show.

[...]

Doesn't anyone have the stones to make a Transformers series that looks like the original animated movie? That was made 23 years ago, without computers! That would rock. Come on, the Transfromers at least deserve that kind of tribute.

For your first point - do you actually know how difficult it can be to produce a minimalist, stylised design that evokes the character of the original? It takes quite a lot of talent, and really isn't something any 'lazy hack' could just turn out. It needs a real understanding of shape and motion; you can't effectively reduce something to its most basic form without understanding how it works at its most complex.

As long as this style of show sells, as long as it appeals to the target audience, people will make it. When the in-style changes, so will the style of new cartoons. It's simple reality, not just foisting off any old 'waste' because you can't be bothered to draw anything more complicated. Piling on the complexity without understanding the basic form beneath it is one of the biggest tell-tale marks of an amateur cartoonist who hasn't 'clicked' yet.

For your second, the original TFTM is littered with animation mistakes, to the point that it's a fandom hobby to spot them. There's a drinking game based on the sheer number of flubs in there! Is that what you want the artists to reproduce? The per-frame art ranged from very good to downright shoddy at times. (Oh yeah, and did you know that the art for TFA is also going to be primarily hand-drawn, not computer generated?) But even if the artists managed to produce something that looked like G1 but without all the mistakes, chances are that no-one outside of the fandom would bother watching it. Times have changed, move on.

Saber Prime wrote:Point One: No Toy has ever been 100% Show Accurate.
Two people said this and one even followed this by saying that Energon and Cybertron were accurate but looked horrible in the cartoon because of it.
Not only does that go agenst the first argument but it's allso your own personal opinion and is in no way a fact.

Yup, it's my opinion. In my opinion, the Cybertron and especially Energon animation models looked like blocky, unposeable lumps of crap. See below for stuff on some inherent problems with this which are not simply my opinion.

By the way, I'm not arguing against myself: I used Energon / Cybertron as an example of what happens when animators try to make their characters look exactly like the toys.

And when I'm talking about accuracy I mean looks only, not flexibility.

Ah... Now there's a problem, you see? Suddenly you're relaxing your definition of "100% accuracy" to allow it to work in your favour, but against other arguments.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work. If a toy is to be 100% accurate in looks, it will necessarily be broadly accurate in flexibility as well. You can't get around the fact that some toys simply cannot physically move their arms across their chest (for example) because there's a big chunk of plastic in the way, no matter how freely their joints can move. If the character model is accurate in the toy's look, that inconvenient corner is still going to be there, and as a result, the model is going to look like a 30-foot tall children's toy rather than a believable warrior. Which looks, as I mentioned previously, stupid.

Point Two: You don't have to see the toys, just the Animation models, to tell show accuracy is impossible... you're arguing agenst my statement that "The Animated models can never be made 100% show accurate" by telling me "Hasbro said 90% show accurate" That's 90% not 100% you're argueing with me but telling me I'm right at the same time.

You seem to be setting this "100% accuracy" thing up as some kind of straw man. Most lines have in fact been a long way off - G1 Ratchet / Ironhide, anyone? It's obvious that no TF line has routinely, if ever, achieved 100% show accuracy, but you seem to be taking that fact and abusing it to back up your otherwise unsupported statement that it is a physical impossibility for this line to even approach full accuracy. However, the fact that the designers claim 90% accuracy on this line, and the photos which have been displayed to back this up, seem to suggest that this is one of the most cartoon-accurate TF toylines ever made, if not the single most accurate. Which was the point I was making, even though you seem to be trying to reverse it.

Point three: I'm basing my arguments on "What I've seen so far and basic knowledge of how things work in the real world" You're telling me I'm wrong by giving aruments and backing them up with your opinions and things you say you've seen but haven't posted any links to.

Uh, this is different from you making statements from uninformed assumption and posting links to things you haven't actually read?

But if it will make you happy:
Photos from the Hasbro presentation
More slideshow photos, from a different angle
Close-up photos of each displayed toy
Video of the Hasbro TFA clip
Video of a ~5-minute clip of the actual show

All your aruments agenst me have actully gone to prove my point more than your own so I'm just going to shut up and let you talk for me.

Either you misunderstood my points, or misinterpreted them to your own liking, or you weren't very sure of what your own points hads been.

Allso what's up with the shoving everything inside one huge block paragraph?

If you're talking about running a whole post into one paragraph, the problem is that it's near impossible to read. If you're talking about my double quote of you, it's because I was quoting two separate posts from which I'd snipped an amount of text between the bits I wanted, and I made a stylistic choice to reflect that by using a pair of consecutive quote blocks. Happy?