First Look, ThunderCats Reboot

I'll also agree with whoever said there should be more spots on Cheetara.

The spots were hot.

Your position is rather pointless, because art *is* subjective. Sometimes you just love something or hate it. Music is intensely personal, for instance, and everyone likes something different. Whatever you're in to, I can find 20 million people in America who think it's stupid, and any art you find attractive there is someone else who thinks it's ugly as sin.

Along with comic and representational art I really like modern art, counting among my favorites Jackson Pollock's #31, Mark Rothko's Orange & Yellow and a guy I found on Deviant Art named SkaPunk who did a painting called "Livingston" which most people would probably call "crappy fingerpaints" but I think it looks awesome. Many people dismiss artworks like these, but I think they're amazing.

um.."art sucked" isn't a critique and wouldn't calling someone a hack imply that they're bad at their job?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scythus Yes it did. Squares, rectangles, and circles with legs and faces is not "good art." If this is what you call "stylized" then I have a few drawings from my childhood that will probably "do it" for you.

I could say the same thing about the Timm-verse.

and yes, you are being irrational and overly defensive.

It was simple and it worked.

When you get too hung up on the shows art work, you genuinely miss out on a good show. There are exceptions to this...but Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack are not those exceptions.

Samurai Jack Seasons: 4 Seasons
Dexter's Laboratory: 4 Seasons
Star War's Clone wars: 3 Seasons


To date, Tartakovsky has amassed 13 Emmy nominations and four wins. He has also been nominated four times for Annie Awards, winning once for Clone Wars.

Various info from Wikipedia



Seems he has done quite well in his career so far. I'd like to see the child that competes with his sense of action and humor.

Personally i'm reserving judgment on the new Thundercats cartoon until i actually see some of it. Character designs are only part of what makes a cartoon good or bad.

If these were one-off images, yes, the disproportions and irregular angles could be considered an issue of competence. However, if you look at things like line regularity, where and how different line thicknesses are used, color palette selection, and even the character geometry, a learned person has to conclude that these were all deliberate actions precisely delivered and intended to convey a certain message when taken in synthesis.

Dee Dee's spindly legs and clownlike oversized feet convey personality characteristics that get across even before you hear that grating voice actress. Samurai Jack's angular design reflects the rigid discipline of the character, while the surreal landscape around him relays some of Jack's own sense of being out of place. Even the ridiculously-styled ultra-deformed Powerpuff Girls exaggerated proportions convey intentional meaning. Heck, even using styles that DO sometime seem to use a child's perspective is a an intentional communication through the art.

Now, you may intelligently disagree with the merits of the style taken. You might even be disgusted with how he applied it to iconic Star Wars characters, or how mixing that style with the computer-generated ships in the Clone Wars miniseries meshed so damn badly. Those are all valid intelligent uses of analysis on a style. (And I don't say that just because I found PowerPuff Girls too grating to even sit through a commercial... and the Clone Wars miniseries sometimes painful to watch (and sometimes excellent)... and don't get me started on Dexter...)

...But when you disregard all that with a shallow statement that this is what "a kid would draw", you're not seeing what the artist is trying to do or communicate.

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All that said, there's also one other factor that does weigh in your favor-- all artistic decisions aside, this art style is incredibly cheap to do. By limiting character angles, making more abrupt movements the norm, and keeping the detail low, viewers don't notice just how littile work needs done in the "tween" frames. If you did something like that on a more realistic model, it would be much MUCH more visible. It makes for much more cost-effective production work, but it does also contribute to the "cheapness" feel for one used to higher-production-cost work like a Disney feature film.

Powerpuff Girls were Craig McCracken's creation not Genndy Tartakovsky, though he worked with Craig on the series (they were classmates at CalArts).

Anyway he's, Tartakovsky, is now more of a director than character designer/storyboard artist. And then only on Dexter's and Samurai Jack, not Clone Wars.

I'm talking about the mini-episodes. As far as I can tell all he did with that series was produce and direct. The only mentions in the art or animation departments were animation director and additional scene layout.

Paul Rudish, Lynne Naylor and Andy Suriano were the character designers, Naylor and Suriano were also CDs for Samurai Jack. Storyboards were done by Bryan Andrews and Mark Andrews. Bryan also did storyboards for Samurai Jack.

Sounds like Lucas hired as much of the crew who did Samurai Jack and asked them to do the same "no edge line" style to a Clone Wars series.

ya, thats the one i meant.

I'm a bit wary of this quote:

This thread has already been modded once, lets keep it that way.