This surprises me... I would have thought that they would have been working on the models and animation by now.

 

The target experience sounds like they're hiring the production-line animators. At this point, they'll already have the character designs and initial episode writing done, and now need people to handle all the "boring" work of actually animating them. My guess is that Hasbro's doing all the design studio work in house, and outsourcing the cheap-labor animation (most animators unfortunately are at the bottom of the barrel until/unless they catch a break to rise out of it). Not that uncommon, really, especially if they're looking at a large number of episodes for a 5-day/week broadcast schedule (don't recall hearing anything on scheduling yet).

 

I think we wait for more information and perhaps some comment from TF fans who work in the visual effects/CG animation industry before passing quick judgement, yes?

 

Standard procedure, actually. You don't need many people for pre-production (ie character design and modeling, plotting, etc) so hiring many people early is just a waste of money, and in japan animators (from the actual production line) are freelancers paid on a per-frame basis, so the usual method is to have them hired for episodes, not whole series, thus temp agencies. Also, actual episode production starts one or two months before the episodes are scheduled for airing. Basically, unlike a feature film where you mobilize a whole lot of people up front (because it's directly shown in its entirety), for a TV series the idea is to have as much of the production work as possible done while the series' airing.

Well, that's for 2D animated series so there may be slight variations for 3D but it's not really different.

So basically so far everything's normal. I'm almost surprised they're outsourcing to japan rather than india (which is 3D's korea, so to speak), I'm gonna guess that's Takara's influence.

 

I'm just surprised Japan gets to animate Transformers yet again. I'm not complaining, it just surprises me. Would've thought maybe Nerd Corps Entertainment in Canada or heck, maybe the unlikely outcome of working with Lucasfilm after establishing a relationship with ILM on the films, who knows.

Still, I've yet to be impressed with CG animation in Japan on television or film compared to western efforts. But that's more a time and budget issue, as various Japanese CG studios ahve done pretty solid work for video game cut scenes over the years. It's up to Hasbro how good they want it to look in the end.

 

I just want this show to air already! Right now, I'm relying on comics to fulfill my Transformers fiction needs. I'm not saying I don't like the comics. They're great. I just really like to have some sort of T.V. series to look forward to. Right now, I'm dying for another series to air!

 

trying to keep an open mind here but it's hard

almost jumped ship on transformers when "Beast Wars" and later "Animated" were announced

hopefully learned my lesson and this show won't blow

 

What are you, Shattered Glass Bathawk? You didn't like either of the post-G1 written and developed in America shows? Well then, I suppose you're hoping for something more 'Movie' which given Hasbro desire for synergy shouldn't be a problem. Just learn to enjoy good stories, 'cause if you're here for something along the lines of Armada, Energon or Cybertron...I don't really know what to say.

Also, dude, seriously, punctuation goes a long way.

 

You kidding? Those two shows are widely considered to be the best Transformers televisual fiction there is  

 

Can't comment until we see a bit of how the new show will look.

 

So far, my only concern is for the show's quality.
If this show is supposed to air in October... that's only 6 months from now and they are only now hiring animators.

It wouldn't be the 1st animated Transformers rush job:

 

I think Bathawk means that when both Beast wars and Animated were first announced he nearly jumped ship, but was later won over by both. So hard as it is he's trying to keep an open mind about the new show.

 

The great thing about Beast Wars was that the writing staff actually took ques from transformers fans on alt.toys.transformers. What with the "A.T.T override" and sector "Tallories" and such. It was a great time to be a transformers fan.