A little too young to remember the old transformers but old enough to remember the animation series “Beast Wars: Transformers” The show was a fully CG animated series created in 1996 from Mainframe Entertainment of Canada. Where in class we learned Canada is notorious for its animation from way back of the 20th century. The animation on here is sick for ’96 and ahead of its time for a Saturday morning show. Not only were there a bunch of robots battling but they were disguised as a bunch of animals. As we discussed in class, animators use animals instead of humans because it was easier. That’s one thing. But to have the characters capture the movements of real animals and then transformed into detailed robots is another thing.
In the clip shown above, this might look like the same graphics of a giant creature on the SyFy channel. You could probably use “Adobe After Effects” to recreate the same thing. But, if we look at it back then, the show captures quite great detail. Look at Optimus Primal, from facial features to his movements is close to the traits of a gorilla. Going a little further in the clip we see Dinobot disguised as a Velociraptor. Though he is a dinosaur, look at his expressions. His facial and hand expressions are human like. The way he makes a fist and his hands are wailing all over the place. We can tell he is pissed. The animators were able to capture the characters so well it was recognized for an Emmy in 1997. Thus why, if anyone watched the show back when they were 8 years old can remember it now because the animation’s quality was so detailed compared to the 2-D cartoons unless you also watched “Starship Troopers”
I commented on Scott Bell’s Blog #3 and Cory Finch’s Blog #3
February 8, 2010 at 2:42 am |
I had completely forgotten about this series and how much of an impression it made on me at the time, which is kind of a shame considering I’ve bought the entire series on DVD. The animation is great and even the less emphasized movements, such as Megatron’s lip curl and lip movements when he speaks, are so well timed that I was never taken out of the show because of obvious flaws in any aspect of the animation. This series really does show off the more advanced skill level of Canadian studios compared with American studios. Especially since this was only Mainframe’s second series, ReBoot was the first and was released 2 years before. Mainframe really was THE studio to try and match while these series were on from the early 90′s to just after 2000.
February 8, 2010 at 5:59 pm |
I think that you are right about this cartoon. I used to watch this Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons growing up. Looking back on it now it does not look as good as I remember, which is really strange because at the time it was cutting edge animation for a synicated show. Not only did the animation play a role in depicting emotions, but the soundtrack was really helpful in indicating the bad guys and good guys, as well as the people who were shady (not knowing if they were bad or god).
February 8, 2010 at 7:33 pm |
[...] Chuck Soo-Hoo’s blog [...]
February 9, 2010 at 2:46 am |
The ability to take Animals and have them transform into specialized machines blows children’s minds (I know it did mine). Animators did an amazing job with just that. Quick, simple gliding motions of the real looking animals into human like machines was revolutionary for the 90s. Truly a gem.
February 9, 2010 at 2:47 am |
[...] commented on Jessica Martin’s and Chuck Soohoo’s blog. Published [...]