Don't worry - I'm sure they'll set us up with a nice "Whiner" meme again so anyone who dislikes this childish artstyle is ironically immature, and half of the fanbase gets beaten into submission and we all believe we like it and will tear into anyone who suggests otherwise!

Go modern marketing!

 

What's interesting to note (Even though I do think the picture looks terrible, and everything I hear about the show storywise makes it sound like something I wouldn't have liked as a 10 year old, much less an adult who really shouldn't be watching cartoons anyhow...) is that some shows mentioned that were claimed to suck, DID NOT SUCK TO EVERYONE.

Let's run down the series for a moment...

(My opinion, with percieved fan view after.)

G1 S1-2: Outside of nostalgia, its pretty horrible in all regards outside of voicework. Barely any characterization, dumb stories, no real plot, poor animation with tons of errors, makes me want to go back and slap my kid self for watching this awful dreck.

Fans: BEST EVER DON'T EVER DO ANYTHING BUT MORE OF THIS WITH THESE CHARACTERS TRUKK NOT MUNKEY!!

G1 S3: Looked ugly as sin with even less appealing artwork. Had some better and amusing stories, but some real dogs as well.

Fans. NO OPTIMUS PRIME RODIMUS SUX MORE OPTIMUS HE CAN'T EVER LEAVE US WAH I CRIED AT THE MOVIE BLARGH.

Beast Wars: Outside of the sometimes jarring slapstick, pretty rad overall, with some fantastic episodes. Looked good too.

Fans. ITS NOT G1. TRUKK NOT MUNKEY RAKSHA IS RIGHT.
Other half of the fans. YA KNOW, ITS PRETTY COOL.

Beast Machines. Utterly gorgeous, cool stylish designs, very interesting storyline.

Fans. BOB SKIR MUST DIE RAARGH!! WANT MEGS PLAYING WITH CR TUB RUBBER DUCKIE AND WASPINATOR SOMEHOW NOT DYING TO THINGS THAT KILLED DINOBOT WAH RHINOX WENT EVIL WHY SILVERBOLT GO EMO AND BLACKARACHNIA ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT HER MAN?

RiD: Completely moronic, but nice to look at and Sky Byte was a hoot.

Fans. UHHHH.. YAY REAL CARS?

Armada: Generally crap till Unicron, but by then how many people were watching?

Fans. Holy crap, the fanbase seems to agree with me, cept with less people actually giving the Unicron arc any credit. And more complaining of POKEBOTS ARGH.

Energon. Pretty cool what I saw of it. Looked better than Armada and was actually a little dark. Emo kid not completely annoying.

Fans. RAR KICKER SUCKS AND WE HATES IT. WE JUST CAN'T TELL YOU WHY.

Cybertron: Kinda mediocre. Nice enough to look at, but generally forgettable.

Fans. Apparently so forgettable its hardly mentioned. CN changing its showtime could be a big reason too. Oh yeah. RAP INTRO BAD.

Everyone has their own viewpoint on every show. Im sure you ask many people and they might not just disagree with my opinions on each show, but disagree with what seems to be the general fan consensus on each installment.

Which also brings up the point that Hasbro might not be out to get us. They keep trying different things to appeal to different generations of kids (They don't care what stunted man(and women) children think about their show. Once we hit 13 or so we aren't that important to them. We should accept this. Not like it, but accept it.) and want to keep the brand fresh since its one of their few enduring IPs.

Even if its the worst thing ever its not the end of the world.

Its never gonna be 1984 again guys. (Or 1996 for you younger folks.)

Whatever magic hit then and the whole robot mania isn't coming back to magically make things wonderful.

There are more entertainment options than ever before, the Internet changes the way we think about things and discuss them, and all sorts of other changes just based on how businesses and people do things in this modern era of high tech high suck living.

The magic some of us had getting up to watch our favorite show with assorted toys is NOT gonna happen to us.

No matter how good or bad TF Heroes is though, it MAY do that for some kids today. It won't be nearly the hugely shared experiences we have, but it will happen on a vastly smaller scale.

 

I'll go along with most of that, though I'll go in a different direction on the A-E-C bunch.

I understand how Japanese series work, but in these cases 50-52 episodes are too much, and get loaded with padding. Just about every last plot element of the series can be retained in half that

IMO, Energon started out stronger than Armada, but finished at lot weaker and less focused. A lot of this probably has to do with the Super Energon/ Powerlinx battles storyline tacked on to the end. The animation was more consistent than armada, but the cel-CGI robots were mostly terrible. They rarely moved more than quick jumps between poses.

I found Cybertron to be the best of the three series, for consistency. The CGI animation was much better than in Energon (though the shaded CGI next to flat 2D characters looks odd). Once you get past the weird accents, the dialogue and dubbing were far superior to the previous two series as well. Attempts at humor were actually funny as well.

---

Exactly how Animated does is yet to be seen. Since we don't know much about movement or stories yet. It does mirror the reactions to the live action movie though. It starts with tons upon TONS of bad reactions to the initial designs/art and early info. That softens some as the shock dies down, and better information comes to light, until some are really looking forward to it. There's always some who refuse to get over their first reactions. We've seen it in Beast Wars, for the movie, and will undoubtedly see it here. If the writing is good, and the character designs move well, there's a good chance 'Animated' will be remembered by history as a favorite TF series, though it might take a couple years for perspective to sink in, a bit like it did for Beast Machines.

 

Very good point. It seems what one show lacked, it was made up for slightly in that area but then decreased dramatically in it's former strong point (for example, writing etc) and they never pulled it all into a complete package. But judging from this picture and knowing how the Cartoon Network studio's operate, that was my premise for my point about this picture that's supposed to represent the new animtion in the new Transformers show. I still don't see how any one could think this picture, which I could have very quickly scribbled up on MS Paint, is a good thing for the brand and to sell the product. It literally looks like something drawn in a kindegarden classroom. Matter of fact, I saw someone make a Starscream on MS Paint and it looked Identicle in style to the Prime in this photo. That was over a few days ago so it must not take very much effort to produce this kind of style.

With me personally, I can't watch a show if I can't first visually accept it. Because if I can't look at it, then I'll never be able to dive into the story. The visuals will always be a distraction. It defeats the whole purpose of illustrations in a story as those visuals are supposed to help you enjoy and understand the story more, and NOT be a distraction to the story being told. With this kind of a style that we see in this photo, I don't think getting into the story bit of it would be a very easy thing to do. Rather, it seems like you would have to hypnotize yourself just to watch it. I've said it in the past... Being entertained is not supposed to be hard work!

 

I'll wait for toys, but this is CN's style, if its well written I'll give the show a look.

 

Pretty much right on the spot. I mean just look how Naruto turned out; such badass first seasons just to peter down into mehhh. As opposed to how Avatar and Oban turned out with no filler episodes whatsoever and little to no fluff/recap. I still find it shocking that western animations are outshining alot of the popular animes.

I don't think you can compare the movie design reactions to this, thou. Simply put, they're apples and oranges. Whereas the movie designs were complex and shockingly different, the deeper people looked and more they observed, the more they appreciated (or at least come to an acceptance). Whereas, this cartoon design is as simple as you can get with a robot; 1st glance is going to be the same as the 10th time you look over it, it's not going to change. The only thing anyone can hope for is the story is excellently told.

As for me, I can't wait for the eventual Kiss Play anime... done by Gainax  

 

I don't think the comparison is all that out of line, at least not yet. Right now we've seen ONE picture for Animated (and some silhouettes) which may be a flawed representation of how the show will actually look, and a blurb of text which may or may not mean anything regarding how the show will be written. In live-action movie terms, we're at that point where examples of early concept art leaked out, and we knew little about the film other than it was being directed by Michael Bay. I know I sure didn't really look forward to the film at that point in time, but I am now. I am because I've got a better idea of the tone of the film, and not because I like the robot designs any better now than I did then. (though I have gotten used to them. I think I like them better as toys than movie images, oddly)

There's still plenty of nuances yet to be seen in Animated, the two most obvious being writing/story and how characters look in motion. If Botcon shows off some real footage from Animated, we might see a few opinion turnaraounds there. It's a bit much to claim we've already seen everything style-wise. when we haven't even seen full drawings of more than one character yet.

When

 

Before me there were 747 posts in this thread! I dont think thats a coincidence.

 

ok im usually against hating art designs of transformers, but this is just rediculous.It looks like prime's funhouse reflection jumped out of the mirror and started dancing to polka....seriously this is worse than some of the cartoons art they have now

 

I hope the actual animation and story blasts one out of the park because if it's anything like this promo pic is, it'll be a huge missed opportunity after the movie.

 

Bruce Tim Ruined animation!

I hate this stupid ass new age Bruce Tim/justice league style!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Any professional Artist Who continues to draw or design like this after the age of FIVE! deserves to die a slow and horrible death. Its a disgrace that this kind of lazy and unimaginative behavior is continueing. I never thought i'd see the day when transformers would cut corners on their designs and animation. Its was fine for BATMAN THE ANMATED SERIES (because it was new and unique at the time) but not now in the new millenium when its used for any and every cartoon that comes out. The style has since becme nothing more than a cheap (and in my eyes uneffective) way for studios to save money and time by cutting out DETAIL! and basic rules of anatomy. I hope that one day studios will wake up and realize that the poor quality of their animation plays a large part in the decline of their viewers just as much as the other factors do.

 

welcome to my kill file

 

I have nothing wrong with the Batman: TAS animation style. It's this overstylized crap they've come up with since, I can't stand. I believe that Cartoon Network has actually said that they feel that the BM:TAS/Justice League style looks "dated." What I'm seeing in that promo picture is far more in line with Teen Titans and Samurai Jack. It really doesn't work for giant friggin robots. I'd rather they'd use a style more akin to Megas XLR.

 

I'd rather they just brought back Megas XLR

 

Now that would rock.

 

Stylistic robots CAN work.

Big O, Maizenkaizer, 5 Star Stories, Dougram, Beast Machines.. those were all very stylized robots that worked.

I'm not sure Heroes actually has a style other than "cheap and easy to animate".

 

I never said they can't, but MEGAS XLR rocked nonetheless.

 

hahahahahahahaha i think this is funny, no way in hell would i ever watch that show if it looks like this

 

This "new Bruce Timm style" has been around a number of years. And TF Animated is not in the JLU style anyway. Which is a great style btw.