Now this isn’t going to be one of those blogs that just has links to other interesting stuff on the internet. Except for today.
Here’s a preview of the new Legion of Super-Heroes animated series. http://www.supermanhomepage.com/news.php?readmore=1903
A little Teen Titansy, but I’ll check it oot.
Addendum: John Turturro will voice in the feature Transformers film, which I assume will be CGI.
I don’t get why so many American cartoons try and go for an anime or ultra-stylized look, especially when they’re based off of comic books or the Looney Tunes or anything else with an already established art style.
I agree. But on the other hand, a lot of the people on that website were saying how great the animation was on the Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons in the 90’s, and clearly, they were crap all around. Surely some middle ground exists and I wish somebody in the industry would find it. JLU was close(ish).
The X-Men and Spider-Man shows were strange in that regard. I remember the animation being decent when I first watched it but, since it’s been off the air, whenever I watch it now I realize just how bad it was. But at least it looked like the comic books come to life.
It think that JLU did what it did very well. The acting was good and the stories became better and better as the show went on. It’s a shame that it’s over. Yes, it had a stylized look but it was established way back when Batman first aired and it wasn’t just an attempt to make American anime like, oh, say, Teen Titans.
Unrelated to the above, Wil Wheaton will be playing the recurring role of Cosmic Boy. And Chameleon Boy is just called Chameleon now. At some point they realized that the whole -boy, -lad, -girl, -lass thing was silly and removed it from a number of the Legion characters.
So you want to talk about art styles in the Warner DC cartoon series, do you? Well yes, JLU was an extension of the style from Superman: TAS which was an extension of the later Batman episodes (and Batman Beyond), but if you take a look at the early Batman episodes you can really see how the style has changed over the years, and I wouldn’t necessarily say all for the better. I didn’t object to Batman and Robin’s style in the New Superman/Batman Adventures but they really messed up the nice, rounded designs of, say, Mr Freeze and the Joker (who they really messed up by giving him Li’l Lulu eyes) – making them flat and more angular. Throughout the various supers series the stylizing became more and more pronounced until we have Teen Titans and now this Legion of Super-Heroes. I am sure I will still enjoy parts of LSH just like I enjoy aspects of Titans, but it seems to me at best unnecessary and at worst distracting.
The live action ‘Transformers’ movie being directed by Michael Bay? CG Transformers yes…live action other stuff mostly.