Could h.c of done aninamted trek much better then filmation did int he 70s??
Could Hanna barbara done a better job then filmnation
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In my opinion the animated television programmes produced by the Hanna Barbera studio in the 1970's were much worse in quality than the Filmation productions. The only positive thing I can say about Hanna Barbera's 1970's productions is that they weren't as bad as the ones they made in the 1980's. Know what I'm sayin?
Hanna Barbera's animation is not very good; they probably could've made 65 episodes a season by their swiping method but I don't think it would be passable for fans. My only optimistic hope would H&B would swipe all of the episodes from the original Jonny Quest series.
Personally, I thought (even at the time watching it on Saturday mornings) Filmation themselves could have done a better job - but yeah, Hanna-Barbera circa 1973-1975; nope - would have looked worse (IMO).
I've always wondered why the second season was only six episodes instead of another sixteen?
JB
JB
Definitely Filmation's '70s shows looked better than Hanna-Barbera's. H-B had more motion and less repetition, but the tradeoff was much sloppier, uglier animation and backgrounds with far more errors.
Moreover, reportedly the reason Roddenberry went with Filmation is because they were the only studio willing to do a faithful recreation of Star Trek's storytelling style, without turning it into a kiddie show with teen sidekicks and cute talking animal mascots and musical numbers. So no, nobody could've done a better job.
Moreover, reportedly the reason Roddenberry went with Filmation is because they were the only studio willing to do a faithful recreation of Star Trek's storytelling style, without turning it into a kiddie show with teen sidekicks and cute talking animal mascots and musical numbers. So no, nobody could've done a better job.
I love Filmation's animated Trek series to pieces, but yeah, I've often thought that Hanna-Barbera might have done a slightly better job of bringing the show to life. I generally prefer the more stylized character designs and backgrounds they did in the 60s and 70s. Their animations strikes me as less wooden and their shows had a more polished feel to them. All in my humble opinion of course. And again, I say that as someone who loves TAS.
Yeah, as I recall, their Flash Gordon series was pretty well done.
One of the best-looking animated shows ever made, thanks to creator Doug Wildey and talented artists like Warren Tufts and Alex Toth. But even Jonny Quest had a lot of limited animation and outright cheats. And a big reason it only lasted one season was because it was a very expensive show. So I don't see Star Trek faring too much better with H/B.
Hanna-Barbera would have put Scooby Doo in space....
Yep, and it was only 5 years later too.
Um, you may not remember this but...
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It's true that Filmation's animation quality improved substantially in the later '70s, but Flash Gordon is not a typical case, because it was actually made as a feature film first with more elaborate, fluid animation (though a rights clash with the 1980 Dino De Laurentiis FG film kept it from getting released aside from a single prime-time broadcast in 1982). Most of the footage from the movie was repurposed for the first season of the 1979 series, albeit with the more adult parts involving WWII and Hitler being cut out, most of the voices recast with a smaller ensemble to save money, and much of the character animation being redrawn to put Flash, Dale, and Zarkov in standardized costumes for simplicity's sake. But it retained the more fluid movements of the movie's heavily rotoscoped animation, and most of its action sequences. A lot of new episodic adventures were inserted in the middle, in a format very like the classic Buster Crabbe FG serials, but they often repurposed animation from the movie as well.
Ideally, and therefore impossibly, an arcane combination of Filmation's superior design work, better backgrounds, better character sheets, etc., combined with the more fluid, less repetitive animation of HB would have made the best show. But as stated, it would have been impossible. They would never have worked together on it, not for anything.
I don't agree. Sure, H-B's animation was less repetitive, but I wouldn't call it more fluid, just more sloppy. Both studios chose a different tradeoff between how many distinct images they drew and how much time and care they spent on making each image look good. H-B chose the former, Filmation the latter.
I've said before that it's a shame Filmation didn't bring back TAS for a new go-around after ST:TMP. They'd done other revivals of old shows -- The New Adventures of Batman, Gilligan's Planet, new seasons of Fat Albert -- so it could've happened. A new Filmation Trek in 1980 or so could've had animation, design, and music on a par with Flash Gordon or Blackstar or The New Adventures of the Lone Ranger, more fluid and beautiful than TAS, still repetitive but with a lot more rotoscoped movement sequences. And it could've taken advantage of all the interesting alien crew members seen as extras in TMP, like Saurians and Betelgeusians and Zaranites. Plus it was around that time or within the next 2-3 years that Filmation brought in writers like Paul Dini, Michael Reaves, Diane Duane, and J. Michael Straczynski. A second, post-TMP animated Trek could thus have been pretty impressive. If it had existed, it could've solidified Filmation Trek's standing in the eyes of fans and given us more TMP-era adventures. So it's a shame they never tried it.
I do.
I vaguely recall it being marginally more tolerable than the original Josie and the Pussycats series. But then again, even at that age, I understood the difference between chamber music and chamber pot music.
I did rather like HB's Sealab 2020, though. And I didn't care much for Filmation's various "Archie" series (although "TV Funnies" wasn't all that bad); see previous remark about musical taste.
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HB less "repetitive"? In any given episode of say "Flintstones" or "Scooby Doo" did characters performing a run "cycle" (meaning the same frames over an over) raced by the same windows, tables and doors over and over during a given sequence?!
"Less" is a relative term, not an absolute. I'm not talking about movement cycles (which both studios used), but about the stock character poses that were Filmation's bread and butter. H-B used stock poses and moves too, but had a higher proportion of newly drawn poses and movements than Filmation did.
Is this what you were thinking of for Star Trek TAS 80’s style?
I remember loving these Care Bear episodes as a kid. Clear spoof of Trek!
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