Ok first up sorry for the creepy screenshots Scott. Also this got longer than I intended for such a small thing but eh.
Buut… As you know, I love TAG, but I do have a lot of issues with it. I’m not going into them all now because it’s not the time or place, but one of the biggies was what I referred to as the ‘lazy’ animation. In contrast to the classics, where the major characters would have multiple and varied outfits for just their time in the Villa, let alone when they’re out, ,in TAG, they have the grand total of two. This basically turns them into that horrible cartoon cliche where characters apparently wear the same clothes day in and day out…which is so not in the spirit of the OS. Like, this goes to the extreme when Alan apparently sleeps in his clothes and has an empty closet. ??? Ok it’s 2065 but no-one can wash clothes that quickly. I’d also cite the recurrence of Ned as lazy animation too – why bother to create and animate a whole new character for a whole new rescue when you can just reuse the same hapless guy, right? But whatever. I’ll suspend my disbelief for your kids show and watch the OS when I want some craftsmanship. (TAG’s sets are AMAZING no-one is denying that. Hell, I’m running a blog dedicated to them.)
BUT I recently bought the whole of season one on amazon video in HD because, well, why not, heh. But HD has…changed my opinion somewhat?? Because I know they animated them to look like puppets, that’s cool, but the thing is you can’t really appreciate that without some ultra-high definition. In Relic when we get this lovely close up of Scott’s face, I noticed some details –
They animated in paint brush marks? You can see them on his forehead and cheekbone. Asides from the texture of the ‘plastic’ that they’re made from, and the fake little cute nostrils omg, they pretended that this little non-marionette had been hand painted with a lil paintbrush? And left ‘traces’ of this?
Ok ok, I concede. The animation is in no way lazy if they thought to put details like this in. However…maybe stuff like this would be better appreciated if it wasn’t only visible when sat watching HD versions less than a metre from a laptop screen, rather than in standard or on a regular TV….
