For better or for worse

Doug Yarbrough · Post by **Doug Yarbrough** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:28 pm

Did Transformers gen 1 have two different animation companies? One a professional body of talanted people who had an lively imagination. Another a room full of children with Crayola and paper for 2 cents an episode.
I say this because of the obvious contrast between for example episodes like "Arise Atlantis!" a top quality animation episode even by today's standards I would say and "Autobot Run" which looks like it was thrown together with crayons by talanted 5 year olds.

anybody know the specifics of why these differences exist?

Señior's Covenant · Post by **Señior's Covenant** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:32 pm

When the five year olds didn't get their cookies & milk in a prompt manner, hell was to be paid forth in animation.

......lots of tardy cookies & milk.

jboyler · Post by **jboyler** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:49 pm

It is true that the quality of the animation can vary dramatically.

I tend to chalk this up to the cartoonists' budgetary concerns. Using large numbers of well-drawn frames is much more expensive than using small numbers of quickly drawn frames.

Therefore it seems natural that A) most of the effort would be put towards the key moments in the episodes and B) overall animation quality would suffer during a budget crunch.

Or maybe they just tried to cut costs by hiring five-year olds.

Whichever.

-J

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 1:15 am

People seem to have a go at the animation of Season 3, but I reckon Season 2 has much more chaff. 'Kremzeek' does indeed look like it was drawn by a load of pre-schoolers. And don't get me started on 'Day of the Machines' - were the animators on drugs??

Ozz · Post by **Ozz** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 6:30 am

I think I read somewhere that Season 3 was made by three different animation studios.

KingMob · Post by **KingMob** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 6:30 am

I know very little about the cartoon, but I think I recall reading somewhere - in Prime Targets probably - that more than one animation studio did indeed work on the cartoon. There was a regular cheap'n'cheerful company, and one that was slightly more upstream, I think. There were a few stories I think...the company that did Call of the Primitives was not the regular studio, for example. The clash between Dark Awakenings and Return of Oppy may also have something to do with that? One was posibly called Akon...dunno, as I said, not really into the cartoon.

jboyler · Post by **jboyler** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 8:47 am

Well, I poked around a bit and it turns out that yes, different animation studios worked on the TF cartoon.

The original Japanese studio Toei did most of the early work, and their work was high quality (relatively speaking) but expensive. Sunbow turned to Korean Studio Akom, who were cheaper but, of course, of poorer quality.

It has been hypothesized that Sunbow was trying to phase out Toei completely, in favor of the cheaper Akom. Some of the episodes may have also been done by a company called TMS, but I've also found one source for this.

-J

Doug Yarbrough · Post by **Doug Yarbrough** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 6:29 pm

spiderfrommars wrote:People seem to have a go at the animation of Season 3, but I reckon Season 2 has much more chaff. 'Kremzeek' does indeed look like it was drawn by a load of pre-schoolers. And don't get me started on 'Day of the Machines' - were the animators on drugs??

Day of the Machines? I thought that was one of the better drawn episodes of the series along with Arise Atlantis, Golden Lagoon, Dinobot Island, Desertion of the Dinobots, etc. You sure we're talking about the same episode. Torq 3, the machines, the oil tankers right

Kremzeek, wasn't the best but I've seen worse. I can see how some of it was a little, sloppy but compared to Autobot Run or The Core it's it looks like the Movie

Auto Beserk was a good one too. Great scene where Optimus Prime dives for his rifle, recovers, and sprays laser blasts at Soundwave and the cassettes

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 6:39 pm

Doug Yarbrough wrote: You sure we're talking about the same episode. Torq 3, the machines, the oil tankers right

Yep, it looks like a mess IMO. Goes to show different strokes for different folks.

Doug Yarbrough · Post by **Doug Yarbrough** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 9:34 pm

I just realized where these weak crayon drawings are from. Anyone remember the action show Spiderman And His Amazing Friends? It was a few years before TF. That is the same drawing form and tech as that show. It occured to me as I was watching City of Steel (see also The Core, Autobot Run) in New York and watching Spike and the other humans walk around. I half expected to see Peter Parker or Spiderman swing by with everybody else. It's the same drawings.

Señior's Covenant · Post by **Señior's Covenant** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 9:38 pm

Doug Yarbrough wrote:Anyone remember the action show Spiderman And His Amazing Friends?

You must mean the animated alnkflewofqonda I refer to as "Why the [composite word including 'f*ck'] are Firestar and IceMan chilling in the apartment/BatCave of Spider-Man? Where's the New Warriors? Where's the X-Men? Why is everybody smiling all the time?"

*Sniff* Memories.

Post by **spiderfrommars** » Thu Aug 18, 2005 11:48 pm

I loved Spiderman And His Amazing Friends. But I have a feeling if I saw it again after all these years my fond memories would get spoilt.

I also remember it used a lot of the instrumental cues that the TF cartoon would have. And Peter Parker/Spider-Man would be Bumblebee.