I often see people discussing "animation" when they're really referring to style an design. The quality of the animation is how it moves, not what it looks like. Filmation's line style is clean, sure, but their animation is pretty crap even for TV of the time, and their color choice (thanks Lou) is really poor in a lot of cases. I have a nostalic fondness for the show, but that doesn't stop me from recognizing its flaws.
The color choices were made by director Hal Sutherland, who was colorblind. It wasn't Lou Scheimer's doing.
And sure, I'm not saying it didn't have flaws, but I'm saying you shouldn't reject the good along with the bad. And I'm saying that if a re-animation were to be done, I'd rather see it done in 2D animation that paid tribute to the good aspects of Filmation's art design, rather than some generic, jerky 3D animation. I think it's ridiculous the way some people assume that 3D animation is supposed to "replace" 2D -- that's like expecting sculpture to replace painting. That's silly. They're two different artistic styles, each with its own value. And there's still plenty of superb work being done in 2D animation on television, even if movies have gotten too caught up in the 3D fad.
It would be interesting if someone could find isolated audio tracks of the actors and totally re-do the show
Except that the actors' voice tracks were often the worst things about the episodes. They were almost literally phoning in their parts, recording their lines from whatever studio was convenient and mailing them in, often not getting any direction to speak of, and so the performances -- especially from the three leads -- were dull and passionless. Anyone who thinks Shatner always overacts would be cured of that upon listening to thirty seconds of his TAS work.
Besides, if you're suggesting replacing Ray Ellis and Norm Prescott's orchestral music with some generic modern synthesized stuff, I consider that blasphemy. I wouldn't mind if a new TAS drew more widely from Filmation's later music library, maybe dropping in some cues from
Space Academy and
Flash Gordon, say, to cut down on the repetition. But that music was the soundtrack of my childhood and is an inseparable part of what makes TAS what it is.
, but I really don't see the point in aping Filmation's style.
Because it looked good. I thought you were the one advising against confusing design and animation. Filmation's animation was weak, especially on this show given the insanely tight deadline they had to work under, but their design work was top-notch. And I never said anything about "aping" -- don't replace my points with straw men. I said to pay homage to their design style while employing fuller animation. In the same way that the TOS Remastered team paid homage to the design and cinematography of the original TOS effects shots and matte paintings while updating them with modern technology.
I'm with Jon Kricfalusi on this: most animation today is stylized for its own sake, not in service of the show, and most of what passes for design is style without function.
I don't know what that has to do with a discussion about Filmation. Their designs weren't especially stylized, just simplified for efficiency. Their visual style was straightforward and unaffected; their adventure shows didn't employ caricature but favored naturalistic character designs. It was about as functional a style as you can possibly get.
)
