WTF Primetime - 01 - Episodes 01-02 - Nov 27 2010 The first Primetime of WTF has Vangelus, Gogdog, Aaron, and Omegus discussing the initial thoughts on animation, characters, and plotpoints after viewing the first two episodes of Transformers Prime. iTunes users - You can subscribe to and review the podcast here: iTunes Store Zune users - You can subscribe here: zune://subscribe/?WTF@TFW=http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/external.php?type=rss2&forumids=404 The RSS feed which includes a media link for the m4a file is: WTF @ TFW Transformers Podcast - TFW2005.com And if you want an MP3 version, it's linked below: http://www.tfw2005.net/podcast/WTF_Primetime_-_01_-_Nov_27_2010.mp3
listening to it right now, your title card for Cliffjumper should have been "Cliffjumper right before 5 minutes into episode 1"
Only part way through, but thank you for calling BS on the connection between WFC and Prime. And I do agree that it doesnt detract from either media, just try to think you can fool us hasbro
Hey! Quick animation comment- While you can have lipsych automatically handled by Maya, and a lot of games nowadays do that through their game engines, on a TV show or movie, you might as well just key it by hand. Y'see, the way y'animate lipsynch in Maya (or Flash or After Effects or sometimes in ToonBoom or even in a lot of stopmo productions) is through the use of pre-created lip poses called 'phonyms'. In a basic character, like Arcee on Transformers, these are made with 'blendshapes', which are sort've individual sculpts of the character you can dial into your animation. So, I might have a sculpt of her saying "ah", "oh", and "ee"; then I pipe those poses into her mouth to make the poses I need for her synch. As a bonus, Maya can even blend from one pose to another, so you can get really good, smooth animation as a result. And you can work fast. Did I mention how fast you can synch with phonyms? Give me twenty minutes and I can do the work it'd take a traditional animator a day and a half to do. Of course, it'll be a little cruddy, and for films you'll want to refine it, but still. So! Back to them lips on them 'Formers. I agree the lips are all off; but I don't think that's a fault of the programming, or even a lack of talent on the animators. I think the issue is that Prime isn't being animated by Western artists. All the animation work is done through Digitalscape, which is a Japanese company, and as you probably know from anime... there's not a lot of lipsynch in any of their animation. Hell, a lot of the time the voices don't even match up to the flaps provided. That's just not what they care about in visual storytelling and acting over there. After all, their art was never about capturing a versimilitude to nature; it was about dramatic composition and economic storytelling. Their acting, even today, is based out of kabuki and noh; kabuki, where when a character is introduced, the character strikes a pose to indicate to the audience exactly what sort've role he's portraying (that's why they do that in tokusatsu, yo.); noh, where emotion is portrayed not through actual facial acting, but from the extreme expression on a mask. Which is a roundabout way of saying the guys animating Prime don't give a s#%! about lips; but the fights are gonna be pretty good.
The voice that Blum is using for Starscream, based on how much we've heard of him as of episode 4, is all natural from what I can tell. It's almost spot-on to his Green Goblin voice from "The Spectacular Spider-Man", only lower, more calculating and less psychotic.
That is a VERY cool infodump! I also thank you. I haven't quite finished the episode yet, but I really love the way you guys are theorizing what they could do on a character level, especially re: the Eradicons. As I've been watching the show, I've been starting to get worried that they're introducing too many big obstacles too soon, instead of building up to them like they did in Animated, and that the plot has nowhere to go and isn't going to have any big reveals when they already have Spoiler Unicron, Dark Energon, a destroyed Cybertron, and zombies . But all y'all's speculation on where they're coming from on the characters, and where they're gonna go, is superinteresting and also super heartening, especially since Orci and Kurtzman have shown they're very very good at building great characters in NuTrek and Fringe. ... Also, looking at IMDB, they both worked on Xena! That might be why Arcee is reminding me of Xena in all the best ways. Cool! ETA: Finished up the podcast while driving home. Vangelus, I am actually disappointed! I thought it was clear that the little skittery thing was an homage to the one Dr. Herbert West made in one of the sequels.
For some odd insane reason, he reminds me of a higher pitched Dr. Robotnik from the old Sonic cartoons (the darker one). That would make a good Megatron voice. I think what kind of bugs me about Prime's portrayal, and you guys were definitely touching on it with how every line he says seems to be of utmost importance, is that I sort of think the character's "humanity" isn't there. Movie and Prime Prime seem a little distant and not very compassionate and down to earth. Going into a whole 'nother nerd realm, I think this is why I like old mentor characters like Obi-Wan and Gandalf, but Dumbledore from Harry Potter just never did it for me. He seemed very distant, whereas Obi-Wan and Gandalf were always there for our heroes (except when they were dead, and even then they came back to help)
I love hearing all this speculation about what's going to happen in the next 3 episodes after just having watched them.
I know, now that the other 3 have been out, I can't wait to hear the reviews of those with everything that happened.
Raph's ability to understand Bee did kind of bug me as well. But I was able to look past it, due to the fact I grew up watching a lot of Star Wars, and they never really explain how some people can understand R2. (Though yes, I am more then sure that there is in fact a lengthy piece of fiction out there that does.) That said, I would very much like them to come up with an explanation for Raph. Even if it's just something small, like Bee is speaking in some kind of audio binary code and Raph, being a tech wiz, of course can understand it. If they can do something like this, and even just write it in as a quick little scene of exposition, I'll be fine with it. On Miko: she didn't really bother me all that much. In fact in some ways I actually found her rather entertaining. I think the thing about her character is that, for all intent purposes, she is the fan. Whether anyone of us would own up to it or not, she is basically us. She obviously grew up watching robot mecha cartoons and this is a dream come true for her, and because of that, she doesn't quite realize the gravity of the situation, due to her completely geeking out. Though that said, I still can not argue with most of the criticism of her character in the show. She does need some major character development, and soon. I just hope she gets it. Cause I actually do, for some reason, find the character a little endearing.
Quick input regarding how it wouldn't line up with WFC, even if one were to change Starscream's reaction to it. It's that in WFC, Cybertron was "ruined" due to Dark Energon corruption. Unless of course, they haven't returned to Cybertron itself for millions of years. Of course, then there's the whole "Blood of Unicron" thing.
I hope when Soundwave speaks he's going to be like the Predator in the end of the first Predator movie
CLIFFJUMPER NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Scrap, I liked him, (especially after reading the prequel comic). Definately enjoying the new show. It's weird though how neutral I'm become about BB, considering G1 BB was always my fave (then again considering what they've turned him into, I just can't get behind it). Arcee and Ratchet are my faves so far, great to see a well developed warrior female bot for once and I'm at Vangelus levels of geekdom over Combs (though oddly from mainly watching completely different stuff he's been in like Star Trek, Fortress, JLU). Loving the return of Welker's Megatron, it's weird that he's finally has enough freedom not to be expected to be the G1 sterotype anymore just as Cullen seems to have very little freedom to be anything but the sterotype these days. Looking forward to the discussion of the rest of the premiere. AND READ EXODUS ALREADY, VANGELUS (it's a decent read, really.) And I like Miko too, though the accent thing is annoying.
I have to disagree with the praise of Frank Welkers new Megatron voice; he sounds like an angry, old Fred from Scoby Doo. If you're going to advertise Welker as Megatron people are going to expect THE voice. They should've gotten David Kaye to do this role.
I have to make a comment, not about the content, but about this podcast in particular. If you ever had to drop the odd/even crews and just have one consistent crew, this podcast's is the lineup I would want! It was also fun listening to primetime #1 after having already watched all 5.