TFCC Botcon 2016 theme - Dawn of the Predacus

[llamatron]

A far more fitting set (with a little bit of tweaking) for a Tripredacus toy.

This would have been a much better approach for a "red light district" Tripredacus toy.

[Verno]

This would have been a much better approach for a "red light district" Tripredacus toy.

Red light district? I don't understand the reference

[llamatron]

Red light district? I don't understand the reference

Doing them up in red and black/grey to emulate their show appearance - which was due to lighting (dark room, only red lights), not necessarily their actual colors. I would assume their "real" colours are their toy colours.

As the minicon team would be a single mold (probably), they would have to be done in a unified colour scheme.

I think it would have been cooler to do the these boxset ones in the toy colours.

[Verno]

Doing them up in red and black/grey to emulate their show appearance - which was due to lighting (dark room, only red lights), not necessarily their actual colors. I would assume their "real" colours are their toy colours.

As the minicon team would be a single mold (probably), they would have to be done in a unified colour scheme.

I think it would have been cooler to do the these boxset ones in the toy colours.

Ah, yes. Sadly this light problem is here to stay as FunPub have come down on the wrong side of the argument.

Surprise surprise, red lights turn things red:


I too think they should have used the original toy colours instead of all red. Use a purple colour to link them all together (including Ravage and Tarantulas), just like the original Tripredacus toys, and it would have looked quite good. Alas.

[griffin]

What red light?
Has anyone actually watched the cartoon? The only illuminating light is bright white.
The table has red buttons that glow red, but they are only strong enough to project a small patch of red on the lower abdomen of the council members... as can be seen by the close-ups that have most of their white/silver parts with no red on them and the red parts being boldly red instead of some other colour looking red.
Cicadacon - Ramhorn - Seaclamp
The white/silver parts are bright and mostly no red glow on them... and the red is pure red, not from a red light source.

Fans keep crying out for cartoon accurate toys & decos, and here we have FunPub doing that, because we already have a set of toys in toy-colours (the original Tripredacus).


Grrrr... stop making me defend FunPub.

[Verno]

Beast Wars: The Agenda (Part 1) - Seeing the light

Let's start at the beginning -- the script.

As luck would have it, a downloadable copy of the original script for Agenda Part 1 exists online. Turning your attention to page 6 of the document (Page 5 of the script) we come to the scene in question. For your reading convenience, the extract:

EXT. PREDACON OUTPOST COMMAND STATION -- SPACE
Shaped like a cool predatory space station -- not a sphere. The wavefront PASSES OVER IT, triggering SPARK FLARES and ALARM KLAXONS.

PREDACON COMPUTER VOICE
Warning! Circuits disrupted! All systems offline!

Lights are going out all over the station.

INSIDE PREDACON STATION
Dark inside, with FLASHES of light as sparks FLARE from disrupted equipment. Dark, vaguely-seen ROBOT SHAPES (ref. ep. 34) run in the corridors.

PREDACON COMPUTER VOICE
Predacon Command Outpost One inoperative. Emergency power activated.

Dim red emergency lights FLICKER ON in the floor. PUSH IN on them and:

MATCH CUT TO:

INT. TRIPREDICUS COUNCIL ROOM
START TIGHT on an emergency light in the tabletop as it FLICKERS ON. PULL BACK as we SEE that its dim redness vaguely illuminates the robot face of GENERAL RAMHORN. The two other members of the Tripredacus Council, GENERAL SEACLAMP and GENERAL CICADACON, are also dimly visible around the table.

GENERAL RAMHORN
Tripredacus Council now in session. General Cicadacon, report.

I took the liberty of emboldening two very important pieces of information. Let those sink in as we move forward to the second part of this analysis -- the show.

Again, we are in luck, as the scene in question is available to view online. For those without the time to watch it, I'll do the hard work for you.

As the Council enter the scene, the room is illuminated by a single, white light source:



As you can see, they are grey. Only after they activate the red lights on the table...



... do they appear red. Red light, unsurprisingly, makes things looks red. Take this scene from Ghostbusters 2 for example:



Allow all of that to sink in as we move on to the third part -- the creative process.

From the TF-Wiki:

The Tripredacus Council shown at the beginning of the episode were meant to be the Tripredacus gestalt toy, and were even referred to by their individual names in the original script. However, time constraints prevented the renders for the figures from exactly matching the toys they were based on, so Hasbro asked that their individual names not be referred to, though the gestalt name was still used for the group.

Before I go on, I will preface by saying that everything I've said up to this point is factual. Only now will I begin to speculate, but given the acknowledgement of time constraints on the production, I don't think I'll be stepping too far from the bounds of reality.

The intention of the scene is clear -- to show mysterious figures in a shadowy command room. The use of red lights is outlined in the script, but given the limitations of time (and potentially the programs used to animate the show itself), shortcuts may have been used. The shortcut in this instance would be to render the three Tripredacus figures red after the lights have been turned on so as to help create the mood.

The white light on them at the beginning of the scene clearly shows them to be grey. The red lights on the table are there to act like a torch under the chin of someone telling a ghost story. It's supposed to look eerie. But perhaps the lights alone weren't achieving this, so they rendered the characters red to aid in this -- but I maintain this was never the intended colour scheme of the characters themselves. If it were, they would have appeared red when they entered the scene and were illuminated only by a single white light source.

Grrrr... stop making me defend FunPub.

I would never make you do that mate. In reality, FunPub had the chance to take these three characters and really make them their own, but have failed at the first step.

[Deonasis]

I feel for you Verno. This is the "tribute" Beast Wars gets

[King Atlas]

The original set is one of my favorite combiners and Beast Wars toys........this can't be real. April fool's?

[CHILENO20]

Can't justify this set in my head. Maybe down the track cheap, but not now. I'll stick with TFSS 4.0, this combiner set is better.

[kup]

This would have been a much better approach for a "red light district" Tripredacus toy.

At this point, a lot of things could have been a better approach. They really scraped the bottom of the barrel here.

It's like if I am allowed a whole bunch of Beast Machines molds and say they are the new Robots in Disguise tribute just because the anniversary happens to be that same year.