Can I 'read' the books as an animated series?

[Destructor]

I'm sure I'm not alone on the boards as someone who basically 'sees' an episode of Star Trek in his head when he reads the books. Like, I cast the new characters, and play out the scenes in my head as though I was watching them on a show. We all do that, with all books, all the time, right?

I think we do it to a different degree with tie-in fiction, because we already have a set visual template on which to lay the events of the books.

So, I've just started reading book one of the Titan series, and I'm a big fan of the art that was shown here in the forums last year that visualized the Titan characters as though they were part of an animated series- in fact I think such a series would be a really cool thing to actually take place.

So my plan for book 1 of Titan is to try and visualize the novel in my head, as I read it, as though I was watching an animated version of the events, rather than live action? Does that make any sense?

It's actually harder than you might think. Already I've found myself converting the events described into 'reality', rather than what an animated show might look like. I've actually begun to wonder if we don't actually convert animated shows, when we watch them, to a more realistic counterpart in our own heads. Does that make sense, also? What I mean to say it, Samurai Jack is just a couple of lines on a screen, but we invest him with character, because I think we (possibly) convert him, in our minds, to a realistic analogue.

I may not be explaining myself very well.

Anyway, I'm so used to visualizing 'Riker' as portrayed by Jonathan Frakes, will it be possible for me to visualize that character as this, and create the entire Trek world in my head as an animated construct? Or am I just talking crazy?

 

[JD]

I don't see where it would be hard at all. I've never done it specifically while reading the book, but I've often tried to picture what Titan or SCE would look like as animated series.

 

[Christopher]

A few months ago, I reread Alan Dean Foster's TAS adaptations and visualized them, including the new portions, as animation in the style of TAS, although I tried to imagine it with more fluid animation. Not quite the same thing there, though, since I have a very familiar referent to draw on. (I even considered trying to visualize the stories in live action as I read them, imagining what the episodes of TAS might've "really" looked like, but it didn't feel right.)

 

[Admiral_Young]

I've visualized the Titan books as an animated series. I think out of the majority of Trek Lit they are structured perfectly to be adapted as well. I envisioned New Frontier as animated series as well to a lesser degree.

 

[captcalhoun]

i see it as live action, like i always do with anything i read.

imagination has a trillion dollar budget.

 

[F. King Daniel]

A few months ago, I reread Alan Dean Foster's TAS adaptations and visualized them, including the new portions, as animation in the style of TAS, although I tried to imagine it with more fluid animation. Not quite the same thing there, though, since I have a very familiar referent to draw on. (I even considered trying to visualize the stories in live action as I read them, imagining what the episodes of TAS might've "really" looked like, but it didn't feel right.)

Whenever I read a TOS comic, I "hear" the lines spoken with TAS-style delivery in my head.

When I read William Shatner's Collision Course, I'd just seen STXI for the first time and saw Chris Pine in the role in my head. It was a perfect fit - Shatner/Reeves-Stevens and Bad Robot's versions of a younger James T. Kirk are nigh-on the same.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I usually read Trek books twice - once just reading, the second time playing it as a film in my head. It's a lot of fun, particularly playing with the setting and background. I don't have any difficulty, but then I'm not doing it animated - it's all "realistic" for me.

 

[Cybersnark]

I tend to do both, depending on what mood I'm in. Star Trek and Star Wars are usually live-action in my head, but I'm a big enough otaku that a lot of other franchises get anime adaptations (complete with dub voice-casting).

i see it as live action, like i always do with anything i read.

imagination has a trillion dollar budget.

"Live action is no substitute for the real thing."

 

[Sci]

I really have no idea how one goes about "seeing" a novel as a film or TV episode or what-have-you. If I read a novel, I read a novel -- it's just a completely different experience for me than watching a film or TV show.

 

[JD]

Don't you picture it in your head as you read it? That's all we're talking about here.

 

[Thestral]

I always do them as live-action, not animated. Though when I don't have a referent, I'm sure my image is rather different that what was intended. F'r example, I somehow missed Sam Bowers being black until Gods of Night (no, seriously - after going back through DS9:R I have no idea how, but it happened) which meant quite a change in my mental image.

 

[Sci]

Don't you picture it in your head as you read it? That's all we're talking about here.

Yes, but I don't picture it as a filmed image, with a frame and focus and all that. There's no mis-en-scene for me. And for me, what I picture in my head periodically stops and is replaced just by just thoughts and sounds, during sequences that are just inner monologues.

 

[captcalhoun]

the only mis-en-scene i have is what the book's narrator voice tells me. i see the New York bridge, all dark, with Sisko standing next to his command chair, looking tense and a Borg cube on the viewscreen firing its red death ray at Alonis, cuz that's what the book tells me.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

I really have no idea how one goes about "seeing" a novel as a film or TV episode or what-have-you. If I read a novel, I read a novel -- it's just a completely different experience for me than watching a film or TV show.

That's why I read them twice. It's two distinct ways of experiencing them. The "film" version has to tweak it a bit, so I only do it the second time, after having already appreciated the novel as a novel, so to speak.

 

[Steve Roby]

Don't you picture it in your head as you read it? That's all we're talking about here.

Yes, but I don't picture it as a filmed image, with a frame and focus and all that. There's no mis-en-scene for me. And for me, what I picture in my head periodically stops and is replaced just by just thoughts and sounds, during sequences that are just inner monologues.

Sounds fairly similar to how I experience reading fiction.

One thing that lets me know a book really isn't working for me is when I'm past the first page and I'm still consciously aware that I'm looking at printed words on a page and seeing nothing else.

 

[JRoss]

I always read the Series of Unfortunate Events as a cartoon.

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I usually "see" them like a live action tv show/movie. Sometimes I'll even go so far as imagining certain camera angles.

 

[Technobuilder]

One of the reasons I finally became a "reader" in school was that I was able to bypass the tedious nature of reading words on a page which I could then "listen" to aurally in my head and instead convert them into visual representations of scene and movement without a time lag for interpretation.

As I read, I set the scene in my head and then fill it with representations of the characters and events, and if I'm doing it right... or rather the author has done his job well, I can completely ignore the fact that I'm reading and just enjoy the show.

It's a more immersive experience than just seeing events from a static frame, and never just from one "camera angle" either.

Very similar to how I enjoy 'subbed' anime or foreign language films; I hear the sound of the native dialogue but simultaneously I'm "hearing" the translation that I'm reading in English in that voice. (One of the reasons it's hard to watch "dubbed" anime after watching it with subs, The characters all sound wrong.)