We've been hearing about the new Clone Wars cartoon for some time now, and finally a little taste of the new series is available on the Star Wars site.
We've been told previously that this new series would focus on the clone wars that took place between episodes two and three (Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith) and those of us who are both Star Wars fanboys and animation nerds were excited to see what this new animated series would look like.
Am I the only one who was rather underwhelmed by what he saw? Clearly, a lot of work has gone into this new series, but the human characters look and move as if they've been carved from plastic. Amidst all the flying debris, laser blasts, spaceships and explosions, I saw no real "life" in the trailer at all. Sure, characters fight and fly through the air, but their movements are just slightly more fluid than creatures in a Rankin Bass production.
It makes me wonder exactly what style they're going for here. If they make it too much like an actual cartoon, that could take away from the drama, but if they make it too stiff, which I believe they did, than the human characters look too much like action figures. My lukewarm response to what I saw is diluted somewhat by not knowing how the hell I would have done it differently. I just know I don't quite care for the design of this new series. Perhaps I'll change my mind once I see a full episode on a full screen, but this brief glimpse didn't thrill me like I hoped it would.
Thanks to Kopolee for telling us about this.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-28-2007 @ 10:00PM
Travis Bell said...
You know, I have been pretty excited for these 2 new series, and now that I see the first glimpse of the aniimated one, I think Star Wars will be a nice thing to see on the ol' television.
Are they doing multiple full seasons, or just what they did with the original Clone Wars where it was a pretty limited series?
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5-28-2007 @ 10:05PM
David said...
I don't know why they are redoing this at all, doesn't make any sense to me. There was a mini series of the Clone Wars, this seems like Star Wars milknig to me.
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5-28-2007 @ 10:31PM
Walt said...
I've always said that doing a animated feature using (what looks like to be the modeling program for a console game) would be a great idea, so that it might be produced at a slightly cheaper cost, or at least with more creative control. This amounts to making a bunch of "cut scenes" from a video game -- which is fine, but --
You have to have a story worth telling, and at this point, stories in the Clone Wars that involve characters we already know are going to survive lessens the overall dramatic stakes. Even if it doesn't, it sure seems that way going in. People who _know_ STAR WARS may well watch it, but people who didn't necessarily love what they saw in the last three movies in the series are going to be underimpressed.
That, and... the faces, especially Skywalker. Remember the commentary about the making of TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE where the puppet head of who was it, Matt Damon? came back and it didn't really look like him, and so they had him say his name and nothing else because the puppet head made him look like a doofus? That's the case with Skywalker here. Looks like a Mafia hitman in need of a shave. Not good
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5-28-2007 @ 10:54PM
Charles said...
I'll probably have to see a episode, whether it's 30-seconds, 10-minutes, 30-minutes or however long this incarnation is. The action was good, but the animation felt like... a cut-scene in a kid's video game. Which would be fine if the trailer didn't make this series look darker. I dunno... The 2-D gave the series edge. I'll have to wait and see a full episode first, I think, before giving it a final verdict.
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5-28-2007 @ 11:31PM
itsy said...
Sneak "peek"!!
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5-28-2007 @ 11:41PM
Adam from TV Squad said...
Thank you :)
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5-28-2007 @ 11:46PM
CaliberSRT4 said...
So will this be on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim?
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5-28-2007 @ 11:54PM
David said...
The show has not been picked up yet.
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5-29-2007 @ 1:08AM
Pete said...
Haven't we seen all this before? I'd stick with the superior animated shorts made by Genndy Tartakovsky from 2003.
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5-29-2007 @ 1:48AM
Tom said...
I think the problem with the human characters is their hair. It's a solid object in what we see. This worked fine in the animated series, since we could easily accept it as a limitation of animation. But with CGI, we KNOW that they can render hair as a moveable object.
That said, the CGI Asajj Ventress is already far better than the animated series version. She has pupils and she doesn't speak like she just rose from the grave.
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5-29-2007 @ 10:02AM
Mike Davis said...
Wow.
An entire show composed of video game cutscenes.
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5-29-2007 @ 10:20AM
jinmiseru said...
I was really excited about this new series, but the trailer i saw didn't blow me away like i hoped it would. I thought the overall graphic designs were underachieved, and the main characters looked as if they were carved out of wood or something. Now i know it costs a lot of dough to create a decent 3D cartoon series but it felt like the folks at LucasFilms didn't raise the bar quite high enough. The story might be good though, so I'll just have to wait and see... I have to admit I was a big fan of the 2D version, thought it was edgier, with its fast-paced rhythm.
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5-29-2007 @ 1:06PM
Justin said...
Looks great....looking forward to seeing this hopefully on a network that broadcasts in hi-def.
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5-29-2007 @ 4:43PM
Bash said...
I wish they would return to the "Dexter's Laboratory" kind of drawing. Those were cool.
This looks awful because Game-CGIs can be done better. Blizzard Entertainment showed us that it can. Of course that's asking a bit much but either you do it right or you don't do it at all.
If they produce this/if it get's picked up then it will really be milking the cash-cow because at the moment this is sub-par quality-wise.
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