Soundwarp watches Beast Wars

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Originally Posted by Paulbot

Pretty fair comment and ranking Soundwarp. When STL started watching BW series one I suggested giving him a list of key plot episodes, because in my opinion there's quite a few episodes you could skip in the first series and not be any worse off.

You've listed some of the negatives, but I'd be interested to know what you think are some of the positives/highlights?

But also given the posts STL's thread, I think somepeople might drop spoilery hints about season two and three in follow up posts. Maybe come back to this thread once you've seen the next season?

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Personally, I would not be not be as much of a Transformer fan today if it wasn't for Beast Wars. It added so much to the fictional G1 Universe and its influence continues on even in modern fiction in different Transformer lines.

I also don't understand why people went into such rages with BW to the point that they refused to acknowledge its existence, thankfully that's very rare now but I still don't understand why people even refused to give it a go.

I have watched all the TF series and although I really dislike and even hate some of them, I did experience them before making up my mind but even so there are much worse lines out there deserving of fan rage much more than BW.

Headmasters was Craptacular but a good cure for insomnia:D. As everyone has said before watch season 2 as I think you'll enjoy it, I really can't say much more with out giving things away so I'll leave it at that;).

It is a pity about the small cast, and very rarely do you see more than a 4 or 5 on screen at one time... but that was just a sign of the time. CG animation was so new, this show was breaking new ground every year with what a fully CG animated cartoon could do. I remember them saying that they quite often crashed their computers because of how much they tried to cram in with characters, movement and visual effects. So it wasn't a matter of limiting the cast on purpose, it was instead working stories around the small number of characters they could have on screen at any one time (in the earlier episodes at least). A positive side effect though was that we got a lot more depth to the stories and characters, and not just episodes of mass intros, that gets confusing.

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Originally Posted by Soundwarp

I do believe that I wasn't drawn to it as much as other series as there was the lack of human interaction; I feel that this left me not feeling close to the show or believing it as much.

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And this is why Michael Bay injected so many human characters into the live action movie. Human characters help audiences to empathise and relate to alien characters.

I'm not saying that it's an inherit flaw of BW - in fact, a lot of Transformers fans prefer having little to no human presence (and a lot of fans don't like how the movie is so human-centric) - but at the same time it is true that having humans in TFs does make it easier to relate.

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Originally Posted by Soundwarp

IMO they could have done the show and had a more appealing intro,

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Yeah, the opening and closing theme music sucks. :/ Beast Wars II has the best music (Cyber Nation Network) and I like the music from the BW movie and BW Neo too. But I usually skip past the opening/closing on the Canadian series. (-_-)

Still... gotta give them points for trying something original instead of just trying to rehash the G1 "More Than Meets The Eye" tune (I'm so sick of non-G1 shows using it... just leave it alone already!).

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Originally Posted by Soundwarp

Another downfall IMO it lacked characters, by that I mean in number.

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re: what griffin said. :)
Also, CG animation is expensive. In cel animation everything is hand-drawn. When you want to introduce a new character it's really simple, just draw it in! Woo! With 3D CGI it's different - you actually have to construct the model on the computer from the bare "skeletal" frame then flesh in textures, tones etc. With the Transformers that appear on the show they actually do a scan of the toy in robot and beast mode and also photograph it from multiple angles. They use the 3D scans and photos as references to construct the animation models. It's very time consuming and expensive!

Now remember that Mainframe are working within a budget, as designated by Hasbro. Hasbro dictates which characters Mainframe are allowed to use and when. They did this during G1 too, but because cel animation was cheaper, Hasbro eventually allowed Sunbow to feature most of the toys in the cartoon. Because CGI is more cost-prohibitive Hasbro only allowed Mainframe to show a select number of characters in the show. Beast Wars II, the Beast Wars movie and Beast Wars Neo are cel animated, so Takara allowed the animation studio (can't remember which one it was off hand, but it did air on TV Tokyo) to feature every toy in the show. But the quality of the story isn't anywhere near as good as in the Canadian series...

As griffin eluded to, the advantage of having a smaller cast is that the show becomes less of a toy advert and writers can actually focus on the story instead of promoting a new toy every episode.

It's interesting to see some of the cost-cutting things that the animators do throughout various episodes to save money. For example, with characters that don't regularly recurr throughout the show, their models are relatively far less detailed and simpler - and often covered in shadows or just shown for a split second as was the case with G1 Starscream's ghost (and if you freeze-frame it it's a less detailed CG model compared to the BW TFs, but it also adds to making it look more spectral so it works in its favour :)). There's other cost-cutting things that they do later but I won't mention that until after you've seen them. :)

And yeah, what were some of the positive aspects? Did you like all the G1 and Transfandom references? What about the adult humour?

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Originally Posted by kup

hmm...That didn't really say much but anyway. I guess you were in a 'TrukkNotMunky' phase as you refused to acknowledge it even before watching it so you going through the first season is a good effort.

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Originally Posted by kup

Personally, I would not be not be as much of a Transformer fan today if it wasn't for Beast Wars. It added so much to the fictional G1 Universe and its influence continues on even in modern fiction in different Transformer lines.

I also don't understand why people went into such rages with BW to the point that they refused to acknowledge its existence, thankfully that's very rare now but I still don't understand why people even refused to give it a go.

I have watched all the TF series and although I really dislike and even hate some of them, I did experience them before making up my mind but even so there are much worse lines out there deserving of fan rage much more than BW.

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Just as i expected.

If you have a beef please open a new thread as this one is for ME watching BW.

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Originally Posted by Soundwarp

Just as i expected.

If you have a beef please open a new thread as this one is for ME watching BW.

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I think you are taking it the wrong way but never mind. I am not flaming you but since you seem rather jumpy about other views or perspectives I will no longer participate in this discussion.

Its not a big deal for me if you like it or not and boards are about discussion/opinions but since this thread is only about your views that's fine. Good luck with watching the show and I hope you enjoy it.

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

Also, CG animation is expensive.

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You are not joking there. Back in the mid 90's there was not even a bipedial rigging system (giving a human like skeleton to a character model) and there was no character modelling cheating like there is these days, every object in the show had to be created "by hand" in the 3D software program. It's time consuming, and a single mistake can mean hours or days of modelling wasted.

These days items can be scanned it from models (wire, plasticine, clay etc), and with all the handy tools in 3d Software programs nowadays it is much easier to actually create objects in the software.

If you have ever had to rig a humanoid character model without using a bipedal rigging system you really come to appreciate what these guys did back before the animated boom.

Sure Toy Story looked nicer and was released at a similar time, but the $$$ and crew numbers (not only in the animation, but in the creating of software to make all facets of animation easier) that Pixar used compared to the Mainframe team is staggering. Just watch the credits!

Good to hear ur thoughts, warpy. I too myself was a so-so after the first season. Some meh, some good. The second season is much better and the third is pretty decent too. Some of the episodes like Call of the Wild I remember as being terribly painful and it was only 22mins! And I watched things over a period of 2 months so i can imagine how u feel having to sit through some very slow stuff!

So do I get to borrow the DVDs next then?

I reckon you were very generous in that rating there man.

Also, aside from the character models, there's also all those backgrounds. All those trees, rocks, mountains, open fields, skies, clouds, water, fire, crystals, starship interiors & exteriors etc. are really time-consuming, difficult (especially the nature stuff) and very expensive to render in CGI. It's not like cel animation where artists can just paint backgrounds for other animators to layer other cels on top of... just like the characters themselves they have to be constructed.

In the DVD special features Bob Forward talks about the challenge of always forcing the audience to look inside a tiny box and never to look out of it, because there was literally nothing outside of the box!

Season 2 shows us a big improvement in the quality of CG rendering and animation as well as other visual effects & techniques (such as lighting apeture, glare, focus pulls etc. - stuff never previously seen in Transformers). And the vastly improved visual animation/effects in Season 2 isn't just my opinion - it won an Emmy Award for best special effects in an animated television series in 1998! :) :D