Clone Wars 1x03 "Shadow of Malevolence" Grading Thread *SPOLIERS*

[Christopher]

Ahsoka looks more like an anime character to me. I think Bratz dolls are hideous, but she looks fine to my eye, though she took a little bit of getting used to.

Besides, who's to say that her species doesn't genuinely have oversized eyes? Have we seen any members of her race in live action? (I think maybe there was one, but I'm not sure.)

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Ahsoka looks more like an anime character to me. I think Bratz dolls are hideous, but she looks fine to my eye, though she took a little bit of getting used to.

Besides, who's to say that her species doesn't genuinely have oversized eyes? Have we seen any members of her race in live action? (I think maybe there was one, but I'm not sure.)

Even if they do, it doesn't mean she doesn't look like a Bratz doll. I think it's the big eyes + big lipstick lips.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Than why stylize them? Why not make nthem resemble real-life proportioned people.

Ask Picasso. Cartooning is an art form, and realism is only one style of art.

People still talk fodly of the 80's G.I. Joe cartoon, and the 80's Transformers cartoon. They talk about the stories, not about the character design. Why? Because the character designs were in proportion and they didn't stick out.

That's a total non sequitur. People talk about the stories in Batman:TAS and the other Timmverse shows; in The Simpsons and Futurama; in Akira and Ghost in the Shell; in Avatar: The Last Airbender; in The Incredibles and Wall-E; and in countless other works of animation that employ stylized character designs. There's no reason why an animated show can't be artistically distinctive as well as having strong stories. It's not a choice of one or the other; good animated shows or films are impressive in both respects.

Besides, you want to cite Transformers as an example of proper proportions??? I don't think so.

I wasn't talking about the proportions in that way. You compare the crazy designs in the new animated series with the old, and you'll see what I mean.. a conservative appearance. I never thought how dumb Prime looks, because in the old she hhe looked like Prime. I never thought much about Megatron, even though he shrunk when he transformed.. I thought that he was in his robot form taht ws Megatron... and he has a plan. Look at the humans in taht show. Obviously animated, but they didn't have huge heads or overly skinny bodies.. thye looked like people.

 

[Christopher]

^^They looked ugly. The animation on the '80s GI Joe/Transformers was very crude and sloppy. One of the problems with realistic cartoon character designs is that it's hard to animate them well and keep the proportions consistent, and so if time and budget are limited, the results tend to be crude. This is one reason for the increased use of stylization in modern animation: more stylized designs are easier to animate well.

Of course that's not a factor in a 3D-animated series like The Clone Wars, since once you construct a digital character, it's then simply a matter of "puppeteering" it to create a performance. But the point is that a more naturalistic character design style, in and of itself, doesn't automatically mean better animation, and it often makes for worse animation. Because animation is not photography. It's not just a substitute for reality, it's a way of creating a distinct reality with its own visual language.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

If you read my early post on this thread I recognized that I never thought that the animation in those cartoons was great.. meaning the smoothness of motion. What I am saying is that I was never distracted by awkward character designs. I never had to worry about humans with potato-head heads (like Palpatime) big eyes (Akosha) or strange wood carved beards (like ObiWan).

thay at leats tried to draw them with realistic features so that, as a kid, I could focus on the story, not the odd designs.

 

[Cicero]

But the point is that stylization in animation is not "wrong" just because it's different from what you personally grew up with.

Christopher, intentionally or unintentionally, you are arguing dishonestly. Tuln has at no point said that they dislike the stylized animation of Clone Wars because it is different from what they grew up with, let alone just because it is so.

Your arguments aren't demonstrating that the designers for The Clone Wars are wrong, only that you have a very narrow and prejudiced set of standards.

That is a strikingly unfair and pejorative way of portraying another person's opinion.


Ahsoka is Togruta, btw, the same species as Master Shaak Ti and youngling Ashla.

For what it's worth, I don't mind the art style, but probably would have preferred something more realistic or rounded.

 

[Sephiroth]

I just can't wait to see how Ahsoka Dies

 

[Psion]

Tuln, watch this video series to get some background on the Uncanny Valley principle. It will go at least part of the way towards explaining some of the production choices made. You might also want to consider the "Final Fantasy" and "Polar Express" movies where the quality and style was arguably better than that used in Clone Wars, but most people find the characters subtly off-putting.

There's also another consideration: the more rendering tricks you use for CGI, such as simulated hair, sub-surface-scattering for skin translucence, ray tracing or photon scattering for optical effects, the greater the demand on the machines rendering the cartoon. I went to see the "Clone Wars" movie in the theater not as a Star Wars fan, but as someone who dabbles in CGI, knows a lot of the tricks and gotchas, and curious about their solutions to the challenges. I was astonished that so many of the backgrounds were just painted plates (digital, of course). The production crew cheated a lot in that movie, but did so in clever ways that the average viewer probably missed. The effect of all these cheats is to reduce the rendering time as much as is practical and still be able to convey personality and expression. And the more you reduce rendering time, the more footage you can render with available resources.

In addition to rendering time, realistic characters require more work from their animators. When you have faces modeled around a muscle and skeleton system like the more advanced techniques use, you also have a lot more control points to animate.

Time is money, as they say, and by rendering simpler characters with simpler techniques, they're saving a bunch of time and, therefore, saving a lot of money.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Thanks I'll check it out.

I'm not talking about super realizdm with lighting movement and rendering. I'm just talking about character proportions. It seems every new cartoon has people with malformed parts,

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

Here's wjhat I mean:

I'm not saying the animation itself is bad or good. I'm saying that in the below pic (I wish I had more pics but I'll have to look) the characters are drawn like normal people, in terms of body proportions. Thjey may or may not be well animated but attention was made to make them look normal. their features are not distracting and tehy don't draw attention to themselves.

But in teh new SpiderMan cartoon, which is a trend that every new animation seems to have, the proportions are silly..big heads, thin ankles, whatever

I'd rather have a spidey that looked like this:

 

[Psion]

Oooooooh! You just hadn't hit me over the head with enough bricks. Now I get it. And I sort of agree with you. Like Christopher, I had bad reactions to the animated Batman series from the '90s. I eventually overcame that with help from the show's good writing, but I still don't like hyper-stylization.

I think it's the influence of anime; people accepted that level of stylization and now artists and art directors are pushing the limit so every series has a distinct look. Also, animation from the 1960s through the 80s benefitted from production houses that shared their work between series. Background characters, objects, and scenes might find their way into a variety of series, so it was probably in an animation house's interest to amass a library of reusable clips. Why that still doesn't happen eludes me, but I guess computers have made the production process easier, or there's more money being spent on a "fresh look".

In any event, I'm pleased with the style used in Clone Wars. Obiwan is a bit plastic looking, but the clones are remarkably realistic within production limits.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

The new SW series is good enough for me to overlook the stylization of the people. Indeed, the clones look fine. Even Anakin looks fine. and the adventure is great. I like Grevious a lot in the show, he looks like he does in the movie save for the level of detail. But why not draw Obi and Dooku in proportion?

 

[Stevil2001]

I think Dooku uses his beard as a weapon.

 

[Maurice]

There are plenty of good reasons for stylization, some of which are stated above. However, there's also the fact that artists like to find a style for something that thye find interesting, and to put their stamp on it. And often these decisions are driven as much by the tastes and whims of the decision makers as to practical considerations. Frankly, my guess is that the makers of this show realized that the closer they made the characters to looking real, the more they would suffer in comparison to the Star Wars films, so they made a conscious effort to go for a very nonrealistic look to just sidestep that comparison completely. I don't particularly like the character design of this show, either. But that's just taste.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Doesn't anyone else find it odd that everyone refers to Anakin as Master Skywalker? One of the issues in RotS was that he wasn't promoted to Master when he joins the Jedi Council.

There are two different meanings for "master." There's Master as in the teacher of a Padawan, which Anikan is. You can still be "just" a Jedi Knight and be someone's master, and other Jedi will refer to you as such in the presence of your Padawan as a sign of respect. Then there's Master as in the highest attainable rank in the Jedi Order, which is what Anakin expected to become when he was appointed to the Jedi Council.

 

[ancient]

This series is available in HD on iTunes. I decided to get the first episode, "Ambush". It looks great and the characters are actually quite good. The droids are goofy, but that's Ok, this is a cartoon so it makes more sense here.

Anyway, Lucas has done a very good job making a kid's show here. And since I like the CGI, I wouldn't mind watching it from time to time. Though "Ambush" was an Anikin/Anikin's kid free episode so I'm not sure how much I'd want to watch episodes with them.

Actually, he made the droid soldiers so cutsy I think some kids might feel bad when they get smashed. That's the only real problem I saw.

 

[Gaith]

Apart from motion capture, I don't recall seeing any CG humans with realistic proportions. There were some realistically-shaped characters on ReBoot:

... But they're not human, as the blue/green/purple skin demonstrates. (Well, there was AndrAIa, at left, but by the time her AI-program was introduced, she was more like a character with a pink shading than a Caucasian-like one.)

Having realistic CG human coloring as well as proportions might well skirt too close to the Valley. But I agree with you completely on the non-CG Spider-Mans.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Whenever they try to make it look realistic, it looks sort of creepy.

(That's pretty much a summation of the "Uncanny Valley," too, really.)

 

[Mr Light]

I love the look of the new CGI Clone Wars. It may not be photo realistic, but I don't find it stiff or dead or fake at all. The lightsaber fights look just as incredible as the movies.

 

[trekkier]

i gave it a "pretty good" last week was just a tad better. the space battles were awesome. giant space whales? can you go wrong with that nope. haha even the battle droids were not as annoying this time. the only thing that made me cringe was "artooie". blah.