http://tformers.com/transformers-animated-.../9678/news.html

with season 2 ending this makes me ask if season 3 is going to happen. i want it to happen....its such a good show!

I can pretty much say that's a yes. I don't have any proof, but the shows been pretty successful, it's already being pushed out on DvD (heh, y'know, once that was a measure of failure), and the toyline is JUST now hitting the shelves (and selling out almost immediately from what I can tell. )

I think we still have quite a run left in TFA.

Good thing too. We haven't had a TF universe this rich or deep for a while. Or fun! Did I mention fun??!

The LIES!!

http://tformers.com/transformers-ytv-to-ai.../9700/news.html

So, no real big deal, just means we get to watch the finale next week on YouTube and Veoh!

Nothing will stop me to see this finale! I don't care if I'm invited to a party, the answer will be NO! :cool:

Season 3 was given the green light so it will happen, most likey in nov or dec...

uhg... well... on the plus side, we have plenty of toy releases to keep us content until then, AND they are already working on those DvDs, so it won't be as bad as Beast Wars between seasons...

Well, some of us will still be enjoying it on television and avoiding the spoilers :slurp: (I guess he's like a big raspberry...)

yeah, they have their little junior paint pro coloring program going full time, I'm sure there will be 26 more episodes ready in a matter of weeks ;) (dodges tomatoes)

G1 didn't exactly have the best animation, O. As always, it's about the characters and plot.

Actually it was probably one of the best animated series for its time (almost 25 years ago). And Granted, because of budget cutbacks, season 3 got very sloppy after a wonderful season 2, and movie. But still being nearly a quarter century old, I'll take THAT animation over ANIMATED anyday.

And yes while I agree good characters & plot are very crucial elements to any good series, if its ugly to look at, there are some drawbacks.

I go back to my original position, just in case anyone has forgotten, I WANT this series to be successful because it is TRANSFORMERS, I just want it to be BETTER, that's all.( ex --1990's FF & Iron Man season 2...)

*Throws lettuce to O. Supreme*
Sorry, could not find tomatoes, since they are all recalled from that salmonella scare... :catsip

Actually, Big O is right. I was recently rewatching the first few eps of G1 season one, and the animation STILL has moments where I'm blown away. Even for simple things, where they could have done it cheaper. Transport to Oblivion for example has the scene with Bumblebee being chased by the Seekers. That was hand drawn, and EVERYTHING was in motion. The camera panned around, circled Bee while he was ducking and weaving about the rocks and canyons, and was just plain impressive. Compare it to some of the scenes of BeastWars or BeastMachines and it's pitiful, since CGI can pull off those extreme chase camera motions alot easier than hand drawn cells(as G1), but for it's time it had to have been budget(or at least deadline) blowing. And there are more scenes like that throughout.

Transformers Animated has NOTHING like that. I'm sorry, every time I rewatch Transformers Animated two things happen: I find another little facet of the writing and the world building that I love, and another facet of the animation that I hate. It's animated on 3s(if not 6s it seems at times) which means that my little gif animations are just about as smooth as it is(my gif animations are small so you don't notice the framerate shortcut I use, and if you're watching TFA on Youtube you probably don't notice either). But on a full sized screen, trying to lipread in TFA is impossible. Their mouths miss frames and simply look choppy.

Friend of mine who took animation classes with me pointed it out. She hates TFA, saying that even Teen Titans had better production values, with a smoother framerate(excepting when they were using it in a gag). I had to get the DVD to check the frame rate. She's right. Of course, she doesn't care for the new storyline either(she wanted the Autobots to be more powerful and the Decepticons to play a bigger role... with less humans involved at all. Sari was alright, Proffessor Princess made her give up on the series).

The transformations are pretty much the same way. I LIKED TFA for using a combination of all previous transformation styles, from the stockfootage to the flash of light morph. But they added another one that annoyed the heck out of me, that "not really blurred because the framerate can't handle it" moment of nigh invisibility. I hate that. It looks cheap. Heck, that effect looked cheap on the old Looney Tunes cartoons. And it seems the most prominate transformation they use. Because it's EASY to draw. "You want them to transform? Well we will simply draw a few curved lines on that frame for a few frames. They're moving so fast their invisible!"

If you're wondering what I'm talking about, Blackarachnia's first transformation is the one that sticks in my mind the strongest. However Bumblebee and Prowl use it frequently too.

Meh. "If they could do more of what I liked and less of what I didn't, I'd like it more." Any fans motto I suppose. On the whole I like TFA, and I hope they get another season. And maybe a budget increase so they can stop doing "less of what I don't like" as cost cutting.

Or, I'm actually hoping this gets a high enough production rating they do a straight to DVD or MadeforTV movie out of it(Like Reboot got). Widescreen is good, but animate at a faster framerate to smooth things out, please. Without suitable framerate, what's the point of making it widescreen?

*L* Just like DBZ and their fights that are so fast that no one can see them. I love skipping around looking at landscapes with a couple blurry lines to indicate movement.
How the hell did that show ever get to be so popular?

The simple answer for the US is that it was a very violent cartoon for it's time (even censored) and was aired on Sunday mornings when nothing else was on. Oh, and it was aimed at kids to boot. In Japan, it already had a fanbase because of Dragon Ball (both manga and anime). Also, blur fighting works a hell of a lot better in a comic/manga format.

Anyways, I do think the show has a low framerate sence some things just look plan slow. However, I think it's a lot better than G1, but is it really fair to compare these two? I'll rather compare Animated to the Unicron Trilogy because Animated is the best show we've gotten in years (in both animation and story).

speaking of Veoh, has anyone tried the Veoh TV program? I'm afraid it will do something wonky to my computer. All the shows I watch seem to be having hour long episodes lately (and Doctor Who is always that long) and you can't watch them on the site without it. So, anyone tried it?

The invisi-blur works better when it's matched to the direction of the action, and is used for straight forward motions(bluring the whole body when it's charging forward, bluring the hand/arm when throwing a punch, ect). It works BEST when used in limited amounts. DBZ abused it mind you, and I have OTHER issues with DragonBall, but, back to the Blackarachnia example, the way the lines were going you got the feeling it be wrapping a box in purple paper rather than a transformer changing. Nevermind that during the transformation she's invisible. It's not just that parts have blurred out, it's that her body has vanished.

If I wave my hand faster than your eye can follow you'll probably se my arm as a blur and my hand as a less distinct, almost transparent, blur because it's passing through empty air which is transparent. If I wave both my hands real fast, my FACE doesn't turn transparent. Better example, one that doesn't have blood rushing to my fingertips as I try to demonstrate it to myself. Turn on a fan, or airplain propeller. Notice that as it spins really fast the blades of it blur to the point of vanishing. The cap in the center however, it's spinning just as fast but not passing through empty air, so it's still visible, no matter what speed it's moving at.

On the whole Blackarachnia's whole body doesn't actually move at all. All the parts that make it up might, but her body as a whole stays in the same place while transforming. And yet for a moment there it's transparent. Every time I see that it's jarring to me. Possibly because I'm used to DBZ, where the whole body vanishing meant the whole body moved rather than 'we just didn't feel like drawing how complex it was for this frames'. It makes me think that Blackarachnia lept completely out of camera(vanished into unspace?), transformed, then jumped back in.

Oh, and by framerate I don't mean slow. I mean choppy. Like you know there should have been a mouth shape between the two mouthshapes in order to form that word. Here's an example: :krem:

I just called up my save file of this little fellow. He has 8 frames of animation, each holding for as little time held on them as possible by your system(typically about a 0.1 second delay, at least on my machine if you have a better system he's probably REALLY spazzing out).

For referance, film on a good modern projector like you see in a theater runs at 32 frames per second(0.03 second delay). Animation "on 2s" means you show the same picture twice before going to the next, making it the equivelant of 16 frames per second. That's roughtly a 0.06 delay. You can actually slow things down further. On 3s it gets us roughtly to the 0.1 second delay between images. Digital adjusts the math somewhat(rounding numbers, 30 instead of 32, making my delay per second more accurate), but the point is at a delay of 0.06 or less you actually don't see the image on each frame, you only see what image stays on camera for multiple frames.

Of those 8 frames of animation, he's got really only two poses. The first 6 frames he alternates between his two standing poses, which I'd hoped would make his little sparks off his shoulders flicker and crackle. Then the last two frames are identical in pose, with his arms in the air and his feet off the ground. I actually had to do two such frames because while they're identical pose, they're different placement(he's actually still in motion for those two frames and never holds still).

When you're watching that little animation, you really don't notice that his arms DON'T raise. You see them down, you see them up, your mind fills in that they must have raised, and since he's so small you can fill in that 14 some odd pixels of distance his hands travel instantly.

Blow it up to 200% those 28 pixels become a little more obvious, but in my opinion forgivable. This is, for me, watching Transformers Animated on Youtube or similarly small screens(my TV from across the room). Most of you are probably seeing the gif in what I'd consider 200% anyway, because I crank up the resolution on my monitor. If you've got a high pixel count resolution, you might be seeing it smaller(and it looks better and better the smaller it gets, your eyes stop picking out the details and you stop thinking about it)

Blow it up to 400% and it's questionable depending on how well you're paying attention to this kind of thing. At 800% your mind is telling you somethings wrong, you're not watching motion, your watching still pictures in sequence. For referance, Fullscreen on my computer monitor, or me sitting in the chair right in front of my bigscreen, is right around 600% or so. So I'm noticing this.

For referance, Kremzeek there is, on my monitor, roughtly the same size as Prowls mouth during a scene of his dialogue. It wasn't even a close up shot, it was a medium shot where we could see everyone he was talking too. We see people who have mouths every day. We know what it looks like when some one is talking. If we really know this kind of thing, we don't even need to hear the words, the shapes the mouth makes and how long they hold them is so distinctive that we can fill in the sounds it's making for ourselves. Lip reading. If you don't see the lips forming the right shape however, you won't be able to understand what is being said. And some of the cadences are pretty fast. So fast they cant be caught on animation by 3s. You can't lip read off a cartoon.

Okay, I've gone to far on this, and I don't think I'm informing anyone, I'm just ranting on a tangent. I'd better call it a night before I go any further.

Oh, you won't find me disagreeing on the frame rate. I noticed that on the first episoce.



However, while I can't explain DBZs popularity (I think it's crap) I can say that sometimes we're griping a little too much about the animation. Would you rather have great animation and no storyline? Or great stories and crappy animation...

For the past three series we've had both crappy animation AND crappy storylines (well, Cybertron was ok) For RiD we had decent animation and not-to-bad storyline, though a bit slapstick. BW/BM was the only time we've had stellar animation all the way through.

Even in G1, yes, there were segments with FANTASTIC animation. The BULK of the shows though were not THAT impressive. Once it moved past the first two season, there were no fantastically animated pieces.

You can't? I have... I can't remember if I used their widget or not. I can try, it's not my computer (it's at work)

downloaded and installed.

It's got negative points from me already, because once loaded it stays resident in your system tray (that just annoys me...)

The listing is a bit over-extensive too, and the interface is kinda thick lettered, not very sleek.

But everything so far seems to run ok. No system wide crashes yet.

Both regular Veoh videos through IE still run, and I can open VeohTV without a problem and run things there. You can shrink and move the screen, but not completely...

So, eh.

Yeah, I'm loving the story on TFA. Compared to Cybertron/Energon and PARTICULARLY Armada, TFA blows them out of the water. Both in animation and in writing.

And yes, most of G1 was subpar, animation wise, compared to RiD or TFA. Trouble is I haven't found any of those "rare moments" where they "broke the budget" for TFA.

Bit of a pity, since I'm liking TFA quite a bit. You have to ignore my rant on the animation there, I'm sure alot of shows are animated on 3s these days, I just don't watch that many.

Greetigns All,

I guess I am just not seeing it. I think TFA is the WORST TF animated series to date. Now that being said, I think that as has been said before you cannot comapre some series, since overall there have been 3 different techniques used over the years 1-traditional cell animation, 2-Cell Shading, and 3-CG, and even those can be broken down individually but I digress. As far as Cell Animation goes, how can anyone say TFA is BETTER than G1??? Maybe like all art, now it just becomes a matter of opinion. And although I am no artist, I look at detail, color palette, transitions, shadows/shading (if any), perspective etc...

As far as I'm concerned R.I.D. probably has the best traditional cell animation to date, esopecially when you look at the Transformation sequences, they are incredibly detailed. G1 Japanese probably comes next, then original Transformers, then BWII & Neo, then finally at the bottom TFA. I know it was almost 25 years ago, and computers instead of actual hand-drawings are done, but think about it, in a 1 year period (roughly), back in 1984, 16 episodes were produced, compare that with 29 of TFA in 1/2 that time frame. Like I said, I know computers can speed things along, but so can lack of quality. I dunno maybe I am just too old and not seeing what others are. The few episodes I've seen have all been on TV, so the ugliness is apparant. Now that all being said, here is where I believe TFA has a glimmer of hope:

I have seen ONE. The first time Megatron Transformed in "Megatron Rising" (cant remmeber if it was part 1 or 2...) but anyway, THAT scene looked Great! So great that it looked like it came from another series. I'm sure they have probably used that similiar scene repeatedly for Megaron, or at least I would hope so. I immidiately thought- whoever did this should really be doing the rest of this series. But like has been speculated, although we can assume there will be a season 3, we can always hope the animation will be better. The stongest evidence I think was the recent article of an "Elite Guard" Bumblebee toy that's coming out. I know many toys (especially repaints), dont have to be in the series, but I'm putting my mony as this being BB renamed as "Goldbug", when he gets his promotion.

Uh, OS? No one said that. In fact we all said the opposite...

What we are saying is basically along the same line as you... the animation isn't great, it's at a low frame rate. We did however admit that G1 wasn't exactly spectacular animation either, apart from specific moments that 'broke the budget'

I would agree that RiD among the cell-products was the best. And TFA is probabaly among the least animation wise.

That's why I pointed out above, which is more important, story or animation? (I still consider Armada to be lower)

As said before, TFA has a great story. Better than most that have preceeded it.

Design wise I also like TFA, it's a new direction, but we have had plenty of fleshing out of more 'serious' designs, and we have other toylines in the store currently that can take care of anyone who has a Jones for more realism. The TFA designs are fun, detailed, and aren't too baby-ish.

I noticed this comment. Dont get me wrong, I agree with most of what you (RB) & JW are saying, maybe this was just taken out of context.

No, I have to chime in here. G1 did have some great animation, especially for the time. The animation had its lower points, but also stellar points ("Call of the Primitives"). As a series, G1 had some great animation. Beast Wars was great for the time and the season 2 and 3 stuff still holds up well. Beast Machines was beautifully animated, but then we get to the Unicron trilogy. Armada was horrible animation-wise, Energon was better and tried a bit of cel-shaded CG which partially worked. Cybertron got to be quite a bit better, but still looked jumpy at times. We then get to TFA. TFA isn't trying to be any more than it is. It has a more Gendy Tartavosky feel to it. Many feel that this is a cheat and it uses shortcuts, but it also lends itself to certain situations quite well. It doesn't have top notch animation, but this is the current norm. It is good enough and the story has been great so far. The voices are spot-on and that makes me very happy.

Out of context, and I'll admit I misspoke there as well.

What I meant was that G1's quality varied greatly. It had some outstanding animation, and some that was embarrasingly bad(alot of the larger glitches have become (in)famous in the fandom). RiD and TFA were at least more consistant in their quality. If you removed G1's high points(which honestly I don't see as being as common) and left only the midpoints and the low points, TFA's consistance in my opinion makes it the superior, because while it might not quite match the midpoints, it avoids the low points. It's an unfair comparison, but it does show that they're actually not that far apart.

I apparently missed that scene from Megatron Rising. I do remember him transforming, and I wasn't impressed even if they were making a big deal about it. But I don't think that was his first transformation, so I probably missed that scene. I've missed whole episodes of TFA, so there's probably some things I'm not taking into account while forming my opinion.

However, my opinion stands that I want another season of TFA rather than rebooting again so soon.