News And the Next Animated Reconstruction is...

[shapeshifter]

Saddens me to cop to the truth here, I could not stand the cheap animation.

I get that they were trying to match the vocals, which were not exactly the most exciting sounding performances. But going big with the animation anyway, make them a fest for the eyes would have made it more worth it for me, I think.

But yeah, in hindsight it is easy. I don't envy the choices they had to make and probably would have gone with the least expensive choices too.

 

[Christopher]

I get that they were trying to match the vocals, which were not exactly the most exciting sounding performances. But going big with the animation anyway, make them a fest for the eyes would have made it more worth it for me, I think.

I noticed a couple of places in The Evil of the Daleks where the animation didn't match what was pretty clearly happening in the vocals. At one point, you could hear Professor Maxtible's voice getting more distant from the mike as if he was moving around the room, but the animated Maxtible stayed seated. At another, when Ruth Maxtible was reassuring the distraught maid and encouraging her to go back to her room, the placement of their voices and the performance made it pretty clear that Ruth was physically escorting the maid away and comforting her, but the animators had the maid leave alone while Ruth was standing on the staircase landing above. I wondered why they missed those audio cues or chose to disregard them. Probably budget limitations requiring them to keep the animation more simple.

 

[shapeshifter]

That isn't the kind of matching I meant, but yeah, continuity issues too.

 

[Christopher]

That isn't the kind of matching I meant, but yeah, continuity issues too.

What I was trying to suggest was that the limited animation was more about budget than any attempt to match the vocals. And that going big with the animation wouldn't have been an option with the limited funding they had.

 

[shapeshifter]

Emphasis Mine

What I was trying to suggest was that the limited animation was more about budget than any attempt to match the vocals.

And that going big with the animation wouldn't have been an option with the limited funding they had.

I don't envy the choices they had to make and probably would have gone with the least expensive choices too.

 

[N-121973]

I wonder if it was because sales were affected by the fact that the Blu-Ray box sets are coming out and fans were just going to wait a couple more years for them rather than buy them as individual story releases. I mentioned either upthread or elsewhere on the DW forum that I was going to do this and not buy them (in the end I did buy Web of Fear SE & Evil of the Daleks as DVDs to keep the line going. Justifying the purchase even though I'll probably only watch them a handful of times before the Blu-Ray standard editions are released, on the grounds I'd be upgrading from DVD to Blu-Ray).

 

[Nightowl1701]

RadioTimes.com reports that BBC Studios is actively seeking a new funding partner for more animations; "There's hope yet."

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Ah, well, there goes the non-existent rumors the funding was pulled because missing episodes had been found!

 

[Tomalak]

I'm not surprised BBC America pulled the funding - I can't imagine they got particularly high viewing figures. Hopefully another partner can be found.

I'm not uncritical about the quality of some of the animations, but I've enjoyed the vast majority of them and hope they continue.

One of the other complications is that with the exception perhaps of The Wheel in Space, they've already done all the low hanging fruit. The remaining missing stories are more complicated and arguably less popular than all the others produced to date. There are quite a few historicals.

The holy grail is Daleks' Master Plan, but that's twice as long as any other animation produced so far.

 

[Nightowl1701]

That's why they tried what they did with Web of Fear 3 - an attempt to streamline things via cel-shaded computer rendered animation. The movements and facial animation's gonna need a lot more refinement though. DMP can only be done by splitting it in two releases (with 'The Feast of Steven' the cutoff point).

 

[Qonundrum]

I noticed a couple of places in The Evil of the Daleks where the animation didn't match what was pretty clearly happening in the vocals. At one point, you could hear Professor Maxtible's voice getting more distant from the mike as if he was moving around the room, but the animated Maxtible stayed seated. At another, when Ruth Maxtible was reassuring the distraught maid and encouraging her to go back to her room, the placement of their voices and the performance made it pretty clear that Ruth was physically escorting the maid away and comforting her, but the animators had the maid leave alone while Ruth was standing on the staircase landing above. I wondered why they missed those audio cues or chose to disregard them. Probably budget limitations requiring them to keep the animation more simple.

Budget or time limitations, most likely. To catch every possible detail is likely impossible. I've seen some of those issues and they do stand out... But with only, at most, telesnaps and the rare censor clip to go on, the animators do have to guess at distance, background movement/sounds, etc. Combined with a limited time to get any animations finished, it's a bit of a stress. Especially if these are not big sellers, though at one point the animations were solely for stories that were 50% existing or more. Then they started doing more incomplete Troughton stories, which is all in all appreciated. No animation is going to be perfect, but they're far superior to just audio or even the telesnap reconstructions.

If they're short on time then they probably would take a few shortcuts, possibly even at the storyboarding phase before they do the final detailed animations.

(Which reminds: They have said they disregard stories where costuming was too elaborate, though the basics for Jamie's kilt were decent. It'd still be a nightmare to do.)

Sadly, it sounds like 'The Abominable Snowmen' will be the last animation to be done for some time - if at all.

 

[Tomalak]

Yeah, they mentioned that tartan is particularly troublesome to animate using their techniques, which is why Troughton had plan trousers in the Power of the Daleks Special Edition. Jamie's kilt is a sort of cheat that wouldn't necessarily work for other costumes.

There have been examples of scenes being snipped for budgetary reasons - the rough and tumble sequence in The Macra Terror and Troughton playing the recorder in Power.

Supposedly the motion capture technique used for Web of Fear would have eliminated those issues, but that was not well received and would have needed a lot of improvement to tackle longer stories.

 

[jaime]

Eh.
Go all in and do Marco Polo with the animation style of Arcane.
I’d settle for Kung Fu Panda with a hint of Clone Wars.

 

[ATimson]

Go all in and do Marco Polo with the animation style of Arcane.
I’d settle for Kung Fu Panda with a hint of Clone Wars.

If they had that level of budget, they'd be better off investing in a new animation featuring one of the New Series Doctors. More likely to be profitable.

 

[jaime]

If they had that level of budget, they'd be better off investing in a new animation featuring one of the New Series Doctors. More likely to be profitable.

Yes.
But it wouldn’t be Marco Polo. Which is the key thing. Animated Art Film version from the off air audio thanks xD

 

[Turtletrekker]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/lost-doctor-who-episodes-brought-28859152

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[Haggis and tatties]

Oh now that is great news.

 

[Nightowl1701]

IF it’s true, then it’s a very welcome anniversary present! And also a watershed moment; For the first time we’d be getting an historical story. And we’d then only be one story a piece away from five of the first six seasons being ‘complete.’

 

[thribs]

I’m not the biggest fan of their animations. I would rather they just re-filmed them with new actors.

 

[Christopher]

I’m not the biggest fan of their animations. I would rather they just re-filmed them with new actors.

I may have said this already, but I'm sometimes surprised they didn't actually do this back in the day -- rewrite old scripts for new Doctors and companions, on the assumption that the original audience would've aged out or forgotten so the stories would be fresh for the current audience. Some older TV and radio shows did occasionally remake old scripts, and comics publishers sometimes reprinted or slightly modified old stories. So back when DW's producers thought the old stories were gone for good, they could've just remade them for the current Doctors and companions.

And just imagine the continuity arguments that would break out if they'd done that and then the original erased episodes had been recovered...