INTERLUDE: No Comic, Have Pony.
Aaronthewolf on April 4, 2012
Yeah, I'm going to be out of commission for a while because i'm having surgery this week and naturally I've been a little all over the place and unable to get the comic done in time. I'd go in to detail, but the nature of the surgical procedure is kind of embarrassing.
I'm a fan of MLP:FIM, as you've probably gathered from my inclusion of a character thats an homage to that series in the background of more than one comic. I like the style, the writing, the voices, the animation is really good, all around it's a pretty solid show. definitely tops my list of modern cartoon favorites. That list is quite short, and gets shorter each year. Underneath that is probably Adventure Time, as it has much of the elements that made me like the cartoons of the 90's and so on. Shows like these stand out it the sea of cheap, quick, and poorly written animation like lighthouses on a moonless night. Theres so many cheaply made shows put together with flash and 3d modeling these days that have poor animation, or the concept is awful, or the story is…well there is none. Thanks to the ease of flash shortcuts, as well as 3D being able to allow you to have a character designed for every frame it makes it cheaper than ever to produce stuff on the fly. So networks pay the lowest cost, and the animation teams slop together some mess that makes you want to retch like Johnny test. But the real problem isn't the animation, animation doesn't have to be perfect if the content is good. This issue here is that todays animation lacks “soul”, and thanks to ease of use programs, many more cheap shows can be produced quickly.
It's like people complaining about shovelware on the Wii, the only reason that there is so much more shovelware on the Wii than the other systems is that it's easier to build for than the others. Shows like Adventure Time and MLP give me hope however that 2-D and quality story telling haven't completely died out, and maybe within the next few years we'll see a resurgence. Hey I can dream can't I?
P.S. Fluttershy is the best pony! See ya next week!
Pipo at 3:25PM, April 13, 2012
Not that I mean that the show may be bad but it is just the clip I was picking to pick a view. Now on the matter on Johnny Bravo it is basically that the teams are different and take into account it was originally: Van Partible, Butch Hartman and Seth MacFarlane. Now a lot of the team in the case of Family Guy puts how it is made and a problem that has arisen lately is that the Media Watchdogs and the Executive Meddling will kill a lot of potential good shows even in pilot form.
Pipo at 3:10PM, April 13, 2012
When I meant it is a copy of Dexters Lab but at least they try to give decent amounts of character development and try to be fun (which is something that has been lacking in Cartoon Network and I admit I just watched it for it at least managed to crack me up for a few smiles, which is more than a lot of current shows lately). And don't worry I tried to watch MLP:FIM but couldn't get into it... maybe it was the clip I was picking at random and it didn't cater to my tastes.
Aaronthewolf at 5:13PM, April 10, 2012
Add: Once Johnny Test came out I started wondering just how many times people could rip off the "Child Genius" formula before someone caught on. Granted, Dex's Lab didn't own the formula, But Jimmy Newtron is the same thing with all the humor and soul sucked out and minor tweaks, and Johnny Test is the same thing as that only with the genders swapped and a talking dog. It's like, if you are going to use the same structure of a show that is still fresh in peoples minds, then dress it up nice and put enough effort into it for the program to have its own merit. Finally, on the topic of FIM, I would recommend it, but I know not everyone will like it. I'm not the kind of person to aggressively push a show on people. It is surreal however to see a show that started out in the 80's that was essentially a souless commercial of a program get tranformed into something that I could say is probably one of the few programs with soul today, as well as great animation and solid writing.
Aaronthewolf at 4:57PM, April 10, 2012
I can't believe Cartoon Network can even claim themselves to be a "Cartoon Network" when it's desperately trying to push several garbage live action shows. It used to be CN was the last bastion I could go to where some cardboard cutout pre-teen live show would never ever show up. Those are even cheaper and easier to produce so the networks are just eating it up. When it comes to continuity in cartoons It's not a requirement to me, there are so many different types of cartoons and continuity is suitable for some. What I personally hate is a show that can't seem to decide on having continuity or not, like Family Guy (Why is family guy always a good example.) Johnny Bravo was a favorite of mine too, I was in shock when I found out a few years back that Seth Mcfarlane had worked on Johnny Bravo, but I imagine he was a different person then.
Pipo at 3:27PM, April 7, 2012
Well have luck in the surgery. On the matter of animation I know what you mean a lot of the latest shows aren't having a Soul but it is difficult to bring a good the concept of a good one if the main networks are going for cheap teams and never bringing continuity to all. I recall what you mean with Johnny Test (ironically one of the few things I end up watching in Cartoon Network, that network has been going down the drain hard when it comes to bringing Soul hell if anyone may be an "old timer" might recall when they gave us shows like Dexters Lab the ancestor of Johnny Test and just for the rant Johnny Bravo a show I loved for some reasons). On the case of MLP:FIM I'd have to watch it properly and not a few clips on youtube to make a proper judgement. Thing is that sometimes talking about this kind of topic I'd love to make a good rant and or discussion with someone who can bring references back and forth since it is what would make the topic a good topic.