http://www.toonzone.net/news/articles/3 ... ne-14-2011
These have been advertised as animation on various sites with the people doing the write-ups NOT knowing what they're talking about or being deliberately misleading.
These are motion comics... The original art has been scanned and with voiceover and sounds effects added but it's basically a lot of camera trucking and panning. Most suckers who buy this will be very disappointed by the final product.
(And to begin with, the stories generally aren't that good in most motion comics...!)
The earliest example of this -- Marvel-wise -- would the the 1960s Marvel Superheroes show featuring segments based around Captain America, The Sub-Mariner, Thor, and The Incredible Hulk. Those shows were produced by xeroxing original black-and-white comic book art onto cels, coloring it, and doing simple mouth movements and very stiff limb animation. (There's hilariously bad "run" animation of Ice Man from a Sub-Mariner episode.) The majority of the work was, again, camera manipulation. These shows have charm mainly for some of the voiceover work and stories they adapted in the heart of the Marvel renaissance but are acknowledged as otherwise cheap, poor examples of animation.
The new Spider-Woman and Iron Man motion comics are more of the same but in hi-def this time. They were previously "shown" on the web and might have had earlier DVD releases. (I generally pay attention to most Marvel animation releases because I pretty much know what to expect from their past TV series... not much of anything good.)
Warner Bros. also dabbled in the motion comic arena with an adaptation of The Watchmen graphic novel that was released on DVD and Blu ray to coincide with the motion picture.
BEWARE: Marvel Motion Comics are NOT full-animation...
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Extremis had a DVD release, and Spider-Woman is available as part of a graphic novel/DVD package that I've seen. I have curioisty, but maybe not enough to make a purchase. These are on iTunes, as well, and Netflix streaming USA. They may be on the PS Network as well.
DC dabbled further, too, with Batgirl: Year One, Superman: Red Son, and Batman: Mad Love, available from Warner Archive and maybe other sources. I have nothing against these, so long as people know what they're getting. When done well, they can be reasonable entertainment, though certainly not a substitute for full animation. Some of Marvel's motion comics have been worked on by Neal Adams' company, with Neal himself drawing mouths, etc. for the Astonishing X-Men motion comic.
DC dabbled further, too, with Batgirl: Year One, Superman: Red Son, and Batman: Mad Love, available from Warner Archive and maybe other sources. I have nothing against these, so long as people know what they're getting. When done well, they can be reasonable entertainment, though certainly not a substitute for full animation. Some of Marvel's motion comics have been worked on by Neal Adams' company, with Neal himself drawing mouths, etc. for the Astonishing X-Men motion comic.
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Re: BEWARE: Marvel Motion Comics are NOT full-animation...
Waaaaaaayyyy back when Nickelodeon first started broadcasting (I'm talking, like, 1979 or '80), they had a show called Video Comics.
It was, pretty much, exactly what the title implied: comic books -- shown one panel at at a time -- with voice actors reading the dialogue, and occasional sound effects. If there were a particularly 'busy' panel or a splash page, there might be some minimal camera motion .. but that was it; the show had no animation, at all.
The comic books presented were mostly DC titles; Superman, the Flash, Swamp Thing, Adam Strange, etc .. but also featured some of their (even then!) lesser-seen children's comic books, like The Three Mouse-keteers, Doodles Duck or Sugar & Spike.
As a ten-year-old, I loved it.
But my dad walked in on an episode one day, and declared it to be the stupidest thing he'd ever seen on television.
It was, pretty much, exactly what the title implied: comic books -- shown one panel at at a time -- with voice actors reading the dialogue, and occasional sound effects. If there were a particularly 'busy' panel or a splash page, there might be some minimal camera motion .. but that was it; the show had no animation, at all.
The comic books presented were mostly DC titles; Superman, the Flash, Swamp Thing, Adam Strange, etc .. but also featured some of their (even then!) lesser-seen children's comic books, like The Three Mouse-keteers, Doodles Duck or Sugar & Spike.
As a ten-year-old, I loved it.
But my dad walked in on an episode one day, and declared it to be the stupidest thing he'd ever seen on television.
Re: BEWARE: Marvel Motion Comics are NOT full-animation...
I'm afraid to say that I agree with your dad, Droo...
Motion comics cannot replace full, true animation.
As if the work weren't cheapened enough, replacing drawing with more cheesy camera work....!
It doesn't cut it for me... There's enough Flash and anime animation that's bad enough as it is.
Not a huge fan of more product being rushed to market that is so cheesy and cheap-looking.
We get enough fanboy junk like this on YouTube. The stuff is just so wretched...!
I really don't like calling this animation.
The quality of animation seems to swing like a pendulum. Sometimes, the overall level is fairly high and there is a noticeable consistency and excellence in the quality. I'd say when things at are their best, the drawing and storytelling/writing hit at the same time.
Right now, I still think we're on the side of the pendulum where the overall quality isn't that great -- and that pretty much goes for all animation media (CG, hand-drawing, etc.). I'd say both storytelling and the actual animation itself are fairly poor at the moment. There was a time in the from the 1990s to the early 2000s where it was all fairly good... even with obvious budget/time crunch shortfalls showing in the drawing and animation of those series and films, they've withstood the test of time thus far. Good shows and films still get made now but my overall sense is that things are off. I'd say within a few short years, we'll hopefully see the pendulum swing back to the other side and the quality will pick up again -- in spite of the best efforts of pressure groups and management. More Shin-chan and Brave and the Bold, less Captain Planet (THE WORST superhero series made, period!) and Squidbillies, please!
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The Golden Age of Hollywood animation deserved that title. The period from the early 1930s to the late 1940s/early 1950s saw such tremendous technical increase in the quality of animation and storytelling and the most famous animated characters created. It wasn't all Disney, either, even if The Studio deserves a great portion of the credit for the push towards quality. (I wish I could say that today but feel as if the Disney of then died for good in the early 1980s... just not the same company today.)
It's too bad with the way things are going that fewer and fewer people will get to experience those films unless they get lucky to attend a school with an excellent film library or go to a con with a really good animated film screenings. This is just not happening right now with DVD offerings and what cable channels are willing to broadcast.
To me, even before the studio shorts departments were closed (mostly for good), there was a decrease in quality and you could see it visually with the thicker-lined drawings, the rise of UPA style (never cared much for shorts that looked like they were drawn by kindergarteners with finger paint) -- I generally HATE modern art style --, and the retirement of Mickey Mouse and Popeye in theatrical shorts amongst others. The coming of Hanna-Barbera and new TV animation production pretty much sealed the fate of shorts production if nothing else in the late 1950s...
I kind of wonder about anime right now... Bad as things got for US animation after the 1950s, the anime production outfits have been horribly squeezed going on decades now. You wonder when more studios and people will just break...
Motion comics cannot replace full, true animation.
As if the work weren't cheapened enough, replacing drawing with more cheesy camera work....!
It doesn't cut it for me... There's enough Flash and anime animation that's bad enough as it is.
Not a huge fan of more product being rushed to market that is so cheesy and cheap-looking.
We get enough fanboy junk like this on YouTube. The stuff is just so wretched...!
I really don't like calling this animation.
The quality of animation seems to swing like a pendulum. Sometimes, the overall level is fairly high and there is a noticeable consistency and excellence in the quality. I'd say when things at are their best, the drawing and storytelling/writing hit at the same time.
Right now, I still think we're on the side of the pendulum where the overall quality isn't that great -- and that pretty much goes for all animation media (CG, hand-drawing, etc.). I'd say both storytelling and the actual animation itself are fairly poor at the moment. There was a time in the from the 1990s to the early 2000s where it was all fairly good... even with obvious budget/time crunch shortfalls showing in the drawing and animation of those series and films, they've withstood the test of time thus far. Good shows and films still get made now but my overall sense is that things are off. I'd say within a few short years, we'll hopefully see the pendulum swing back to the other side and the quality will pick up again -- in spite of the best efforts of pressure groups and management. More Shin-chan and Brave and the Bold, less Captain Planet (THE WORST superhero series made, period!) and Squidbillies, please!
*********
The Golden Age of Hollywood animation deserved that title. The period from the early 1930s to the late 1940s/early 1950s saw such tremendous technical increase in the quality of animation and storytelling and the most famous animated characters created. It wasn't all Disney, either, even if The Studio deserves a great portion of the credit for the push towards quality. (I wish I could say that today but feel as if the Disney of then died for good in the early 1980s... just not the same company today.)
It's too bad with the way things are going that fewer and fewer people will get to experience those films unless they get lucky to attend a school with an excellent film library or go to a con with a really good animated film screenings. This is just not happening right now with DVD offerings and what cable channels are willing to broadcast.
To me, even before the studio shorts departments were closed (mostly for good), there was a decrease in quality and you could see it visually with the thicker-lined drawings, the rise of UPA style (never cared much for shorts that looked like they were drawn by kindergarteners with finger paint) -- I generally HATE modern art style --, and the retirement of Mickey Mouse and Popeye in theatrical shorts amongst others. The coming of Hanna-Barbera and new TV animation production pretty much sealed the fate of shorts production if nothing else in the late 1950s...
I kind of wonder about anime right now... Bad as things got for US animation after the 1950s, the anime production outfits have been horribly squeezed going on decades now. You wonder when more studios and people will just break...
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Re: BEWARE: Marvel Motion Comics are NOT full-animation...
(One springs to mind...)GeorgeC wrote:These have been advertised as animation on various sites with the people doing the write-ups NOT knowing what they're talking about
And if you're expecting animation, consider yourself "sucker".These are motion comics... The original art has been scanned and with voiceover and sounds effects added but it's basically a lot of camera trucking and panning. Most suckers who buy this will be very disappointed by the final product.
Motion comics have been around long enough to be their own industry, most comic buffs know what to expect.
As noted, they're redistributed Flashes from off of Marvel.com's own website, so it's a pretty SAFE bet that most of the niche fans.....know already.
As for their "not being good"...well, yeah: These are mostly the "Marvel Knights" artsy MA-rated graphic novels, where there's nothing any darn fun about being a superhero.
(Spider-Woman gets to be a battered feminist survivor who snarks endlessly about being "more messed up than Wolverine", Black Panther has to fight off racist government conspiracies....At this point, I'll freakin' WATCH the Joss Whedon X-Men; at least he has a sense of humor, even if it is an insufferable one!)
Which is pretty much how the current gold rush started in the first place--Warner Bros. also dabbled in the motion comic arena with an adaptation of The Watchmen graphic novel that was released on DVD and Blu ray to coincide with the motion picture.
Warner Audiobooks handled the iPod Store-ready Watchmen flash (remember when they didn't know how to do it, and only had one guy doing all the voices, including Silk Spectre?) since they obviously couldn't do an audio tie-in.
Later Warner tried pumping their other franchises (Batman, obviously, and a new shortcut to not having to completely animate new Peanuts cartoons), and an industry-without-a-compass was born.
....Soooo, you're just finding all this out, then?
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Eric, please quit ruining your posts with unecessary snark. Most of your post was fine, except for the personal attacks. George is reporting this info for those that don't know. You already know he's better informed than most. His posts are more helpful than many of the half-baked theories that you often pass off as informed commentary. So play nice or take some time off.
