March 9 2007

source: starwars.com podcast



Starwars.com posted a audio podcast from the Lucas-Paley Conference (just the part where Lucas speaks about the Star Wars TV Projects) + new Yoda Clone Wars CGI 2008 image!

That image is

So what the fuck is this? is it a reworking of the original cartoons or a completely new set of stories?

Completely new stories, mainly secondary characters.

I agree DP.

i'm not quite sure what to expect.

i like the quality of the work thats for certain, the aesthetics... well, i wasnt much of a fan of the artwork on the animated series, so i'm not doing cartwheels yet.

Yeah, me either. I hope they go with less of a cartoon look for some the human characters.

Hmm, not sure if I like the look of Yoda or not.

I agree about going with a less cartoon look for the humans Troy. If they make the humans like how they looked in The Animatrix with "Final Flight Of The Osiris" then that would be awesome.

I loved the artwork for the animated series and I'm glad it looks like they are going with that same look.

I think we've seen too little to say that it's the same look as the Tarkovsky's cartoons. I even don't think the first available image is so stylistically similiar. It just looks like a cartoony version of ESB-like (rather than prequel-like) Yoda's appearence.

I'm pretty sure, even if it is stylistically similar, that it's going to look great. I liked Samurai Jack, but the same style applied to Star Wars didn't have the same appeal for me. I'd guess that was due to my own preconceived notions of what things were supposed to look like, but knowing that didn't make it better. I did like some of the designs CW introduced, like the Jedi-armor look and some of the ship mods. Honestly, whatever this thing looks like I'm going to be watching, at least in the beginning.

By the way if some of you weren't sure what I was talking about for the animation from The Animatrix regarding "Final Flight Of The Osiris" here's a screencap of the character "Thadius" from the short film.

Thadius.jpg



Like I said if they could do the animation like that for humans (and even Yoda if they tried) it would look kick ass.

And cost three times as much.

Ive never seen the animatrix, or FotO, before but that looks awesome. ILM should be able to make something like that happen

The Animatrix is pretty good... especially Final Flight Of The Osiris in my opinion...

I don't really like dig that CG animation style, but then I don't like the Tartakovsky style in the original Clone Wars series. Remember Qui-Gon's huge slanted nose? What were they thinking? The one thing that's been constant of all Star Wars cartoons, from the Holiday Special Boba Fett segment to Clone Wars is that the animation sucks. I would rather they just do it in a traditional style, but make it look good. Computer graphics like Animatrix inevitably looks awkward in my opinion and they don't really need to put that much money and effort into it if they're delivering on the characters and stories.

Sure it looks awkward, but I remember watching Final Fantasy: TSW at the theatre and even though the movie was awful, I was really impressed with how it looked. I don't think we'll ever reach that point where we can't tell the difference between real actors and computer generated, but I can't help but be impressed with each new attempt. I always remember thinking if they remade FF7 on the PS3, like they had the spec video with the introduction a year or so ago, that would end up looking ultra realistic.

Static images from the Final Fantasy: TSW look(ed) impressive, but in motion the movie is terribly unnatural. One of the most annoying things was numerous characters having one fixed face expression (or a few slight variations of one), the main villian for example. Also, the fact that the graphic-artists had only a few years time to produce the "ultra-realistic" CGI was probably one of the main the reasons why the scenery was so repetitive, lifeless and most of the time very dark. I would guess the entire story was so dumb in great part, because the team was so much limited in what they're able to do with the visuals.

Now, Flight of the Osiris is much better, the looks and animation are much more polished. Why? Because it runs friggin 9 minutes! And it's still the only one of the Animatrix shorts in which nothing interesting happens and the locations are either dark or devoid of detail.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is, that I'd much more prefer a creative & fun cartoonish Clone Wars than a bland Final-Fantasy-esque one, where I can almost literally see on-screen the sweat that went into creating every single eyelash of a character and altogether it still looks fake. Especially in motion.