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I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: the animations barely resemble MNOG at all. It’s sub-par spawn of Flash more than anything else.
There’s only so many times this excuse can be thrown about before it loses its legitimacy entirely, and I’d argue it already has given where other story-driven lines had gotten by this stage.
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(You can’t “dislike” posts so I’m just going to put a cactus)
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Umm, that’s bamboo…
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It looks like a cactus…
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Actually that entire exchange made me laugh far more than it should have.
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Yes. You get all my yes.
But story isn’t interchangeable with atmosphere!
I tend to disagree.
Agreed!
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And yet the part of the comment I was replying to was relating to the story, so what’s your point?
Any particular reason why? I mean, I’ve said why I think the animation is garbage (lack of dynamic lighting, flat imagery, bland backgrounds, stilted movement, little-to-no resemblance and obvious inferiority to MNOG).
Even when the seriousness and sense of foreboding and danger do not, in fact, exist in the animations at all?
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Continuing the discussion from Bionicle 2015’s “Atmosphere”:
I reallllly wish LEGO would stop doing that. Especially with something as long-running and original as Bionicle. They have a chance at making a bigger fanbase (and money) through more engagement with a whole bunch of audiences, not just children.
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I want to say one thing, then I’m done.
I don’t think that the animations are meant to fill the role of MNOG. Therefore, they are not as good as MNOG.
I’m just rolling with it right now and not really comparing it to G1 Bionicle. I want to see where it is going first.
They wouldn’t even need to worry about trying to find ways to appeal to wider audiences if they just took children seriously. Doing that is the first step to making it tolerable for other people.
Hence why all the other complaints are judging the animation on its own. Only the last statement compares it to G1, and that’s in response to so many people going “OMG it looks so much like MNOG! It must be an homage of love!”
(Note: Paraphrased quote intended mainly for parody purposes)
As someone who never played the MNOG, and was always drawn in by the CGI, the new animations don’t have the same depth to me. I don’t feel mystery nor awe with the Flash animations they’ve made. CGI is very useful in the fact that it can easily invoke a sense of atmosphere, depth, and awe when done right, and it’s a much better visual communicator than Flash is when it comes to showing off a world. Perspective and realistic lighting really helps with Bionicle’s sci-fi/fantasy world.
I fell in love with the original character animations and the explanation they give through telling less and showing more. Metru Nui’s animations are a great example of this - they show the characters in action, their personality, they show off the locales, and it shows us what they can do. There’s no dialogue spoken by the characters themselves but we have a good estimate of who they were, how they moved, and what equipment they used. It left us with a baseline for our imaginations and how to visualize them when we read stories, fought plastic battles, and made up our own epic expeditions.
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I personally find the aesthetic visually pleasing. They have a storybook-esque look to them, whilst still looking fresh and new. Furthermore, I love the imagery that you seem to hate unconditionally.
It’s more a matter of what the eye finds pleasing, and I can’t really go into depth as to why I does without extensive research on aesthetics.
How doesn’t it? The island is clearly in peril and being overrun by hostile invaders. Beyond that, certain details such as the ambiguously abandoned metropolis, weary disposition of the PoF, and of course the faceless “evil” that’s been alluded to.
I would bring up the dark visual atmosphere, but you clearly aren’t very receptive to the visuals, so I need not waste my figurative breath.
While I can see where you’re coming from, I don’t need the visuals to match the sets precisely, nor does it really matter to me what their movements look like directly; gives more room for the imagination to take over on their fighting style, letting it derive it from their choice in weaponry.
Additionally, I don’t really see what you mean by those CGI animations conveying character… Never really picked up much from the metru animations. The Piraka animations did, but very few of the preceding and subsequent CGI videos did in my eyes.
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Except the way it’s conveyed is half-hearted and, in a sense, undramatic. The animations do little to show what the spiders are doing, other showing a few running around and saying “These people were afraid.” It’s committing the storytelling sin of telling instead of showing, which both undermines its quality and its “storybook-esque” look. And really? You’re just going to say “You just can’t see it”? There is no “dark visual atmosphere”. I’ve seen plenty in other shows, and what these animations have is not it.
Except he never brought up set-accuracy, and do their movements not matter? They both reflect their personalities and the animation quality. Also, fighting styles aren’t something you can just make up in your head. That’s a part of the character and their identity. Giving characters weapons while giving them no distinctive way of using them robs them of that part of their identity. Imagine if that kind of missing identity was applied to something like Lord of the Rings!
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If you really can’t see it, then all I have to tell you is that you act as though you have grayscale glasses.
And I don’t just mean on this specific topic.
It’s one thing if you don’t like certain elements of gen 2, but acting like it’s the greatest travesty to ever befall mankind is more than a bit of a stretch in my opinion.
I can’t force you to see things in a better light, nor can I make you appreciate gen 2 for what it is, but as a friendly suggestion, lighten up a bit. The fact that it doesn’t have the glossy memory sheen that gen one seems to have shouldn’t entice you to turn the other way and say that everything they’ve done so far wrong.
And for all I know, I’m misreading you. But based on what you’ve said, you’re turning a blind eye and claiming that it’s a disaster.
And, simply put, I can appreciate honest criticism but I can’t appreciate blind eyes.
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Iffy.
I’ll give you that one, even though it’s only a few frames that don’t really reflect the overall tone of the episode.
Sure, even though it builds into what I said earlier that the plight the spiders wrought wasn’t clearly shown.
I’d give this one credit for atmosphere if its respective episode didn’t plow right past it with giving enough time to provide any sort of mood (which is still possible for a 90-second animation).
Same response as the second image. Good on its own (even if it still possesses most of the animation’s shortcomings I’ve already mentioned), but it doesn’t reflect its respective episode’s tone.
All in all, the few individual images end up creating a tonal inconsistency as the animations fight for what they want to be: dark and mysterious (what some of these sort-of reflect) or clunky, happy-go-lucky, riskless adventure.
And I don’t. If that were true, I’d be saying it’s destroying the very integrity of Bionicle and all that whiny drama. But I’m not. I’m saying that, imo, on its own and compared to G1, it’s terrible. Not the “worst travesty to ever befall mankind” (When have I ever implied this?), but still terrible. There’s more than just the two absolutes on the spectrum.
You want to know what an actually stylistic look with a dark visual palette looks like?
(Warning: Mature PG-13-esque content)
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@StudentScissorsLeaker Bamtus?
cacboo?
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Whew… What a week, anyway It seems like quite a lot of people have been posting here … EVEN MESO! Finally a TTV member knows I exist. Some pretty heavy stuff been going on even bamboo, wow.
*cacboo
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