[Steven Universe] 1. THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY 2. SAY IT

Mortal Sky

I don't get why folks call MLP well-animated

It's cleanly animated but it's still just a glorified flash animation, and boy howdy, does it show

TankHammer

I lost interest in the show past the first half dozen episodes but I will defend its merit as a great children's program with a lot of heart behind it. It's just unfortunate that people can't discuss it or think about it without immediately arriving at the subject of bronies and the sub groups that really take it over the Edge of what is likely mentally healthy.

Goatmon

Mortal Sky wrote: »

I don't get why folks call MLP well-animated

It's cleanly animated but it's still just a glorified flash animation, and boy howdy, does it show

I'm sorry but I take a little offense at the term "Glorified flash animation" as if there's anything inherently wrong with flash animation as a medium.

MLP is not cheaply done at all.

Even Lauren Faust has mentioned that, a number of times, she came up with a concept for a scene, sent it to the team, decided it would be too costly to pull it off and told them to scrap it, only to be told "No it's fine, we can do it."

As opposed to shows like Total Drama Island, where they're clearly doing it to save money, and that rationale evidences itself in the visual quality.

If you don't think stuff like this looks pretty good, I really don't know what to say. I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree?

Antimatter

it's no foster's home for imaginary friends

Goatmon

It has better animation than Fosters.

So I guess I agree?

Antimatter

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha
good joke

Goatmon

Is this another one of those things where you insist at every turn that your preferred show is better in every way, because you like it the most?

Because that smug crap is what made me not want to visit the Transformers thread anymore.

Antimatter

the show is mediocre. it's okay. it is a perfectly serviceable children's cartoon. it is not anything special and does not merit the obsession of its adult fanbase.

Goatmon

So that's a no on agreeing to disgaree, then. Okay.

Let's just move the topic back to Stephen Universe, before the thread gets locked for becoming a shitty argument about a show the thread wasn't made for.

Brolo

that animation clip you posted was okay

the characters spend a lot of time off-model and they really overuse deform, as does most flash animation, but the frequent cuts hide that a bit better

I much prefer the look of traditional animation for doing looney-toons-esque style emoting rather than vector based, motion graph stuff is always evened out too much

subject matter aside, I'd rather be looking at adventure time's animation or steven universe's animation rather than an MLP-quality-level show done in flash

Goatmon

Well yeah, traditional animation is an established thing that's been around forever, and it'll always be good as long as it's not done at the lowest budget.

Hell, hand-drawn blows everything else out of the water when a team has a proper budget for it, but nobody's willing to pay for that nowadays, except maybe in very short animated bits, so it's pretty much a lost art.

Still. I like the fluidity in flash. At least, when it isn't done very cheaply, like Total Drama Island and it's ilk.

Antimatter

you know what was a well animated show? motorcity

damn, that show was slick
writing and voice acting werent always the best but damn was it pretty and fun
great soundtrack too

Gatsby

The thing I don't get is, that a show's animation shouldn't always be compared constantly to the bottom of the barrel like johnny test and total drama island. Good is good, but you can't keep calling good great just because it does better than the worst. I got no beef with mlp's style, it's going for a storybook look and it's completely serviceable. I just don't get to amount of praise for its animation because it doesn't do anything different and nor does it try to, because that's not what it's aiming for. Meanwhile shows like Adventure Time, Stephen Universe, Motorcity, etc. are top notch for me because they have a unique style that helps make that show what it is, they don't need to be compared to be the dregs like johnny test to be praised, they stand on their own and don't just meet standard expectations of clear and smooth animation. It feels like praising a film for being in-focus, like, yes obviously and some films are noticeably clearer and more defined visually than others but I feel like that's a hollow compliment.

Goatmon

Antimatter wrote: »

you know what was a well animated show? motorcity

damn, that show was slick
writing and voice acting werent always the best but damn was it pretty and fun
great soundtrack too

I never caught that.

I've been somewhat out of the loop the last couple years because we don't have cable TV here.

It looks really good. Not surprised it didn't survive, though. It looked really expensive, even as cartoons go.

Antimatter

disney kept moving the time slot around, just like with gravity falls
gravity falls was much better written, but motorcity i liked more because it had style

Goatmon

Gatsby wrote: »

The thing I don't get is, that a show's animation shouldn't always be compared constantly to the bottom of the barrel like johnny test and total drama island. Good is good, but you can't keep calling good great just because it does better than the worst. I got no beef with mlp's style, it's going for a storybook look and it's completely serviceable. I just don't get to amount of praise for its animation because it doesn't do anything different and nor does it try to, because that's not what it's aiming for. Meanwhile shows like Adventure Time, Stephen Universe, Motorcity, etc. are top notch for me because they have a unique style that helps make that show what it is, they don't need to be compared to be the dregs like johnny test to be praised, they stand on their own and don't just meet standard expectations of clear and smooth animation. It feels like praising a film for being in-focus, like, yes obviously and some films are noticeably clearer and more defined visually than others but I feel like that's a hollow compliment.

I love Adventure Time, but I don't really think the animation is one of its strengths.

It sells itself on the characters, writing, music, and a creator who seems to have infinite fun ideas to keep things interesting.

Goatmon

Antimatter wrote: »

disney kept moving the time slot around, just like with gravity falls
gravity falls was much better written, but motorcity i liked more because it had style

God, I cannot wait for more Gravity Falls.

That show is so fun.

BillyIdle

On the subject of animation quality, I absolutely LOVED the new powerpuff girls special. I liked the new style a lot and the jokes were pretty funny imo

Naphtali

man I miss fosters

though blu kind of got insufferable towards the end

Dys

I kind of wish Blu had stayed with the personality he had in the pilot.

Not annoying or a jerk, just Mac's level-headed-yet-excitable imaginary friend.

It would have made the show a lot better, in my opinion.

Bluedude152

Blu was a fucking monster

sarukun

This page is chock full of crazy.

Goatmon

Yeah, part of why I didn't really watch Foster's much was because the central character was a huge jerk.

Brolo

canada having YTV and later Teletoon instead of Cartoon Network always sucked

I didn't get to see anything of Powerpuff girls, Samurai Jack, Dexter's Lab, Foster's

Also missed out on all of adult swim, toonami

Mortal Sky

DeMoN

Brolo wrote: »

canada having YTV and later Teletoon instead of Cartoon Network always sucked

I didn't get to see anything of Powerpuff girls, Samurai Jack, Dexter's Lab, Foster's

Also missed out on all of adult swim, toonami

YTV totally had Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack and Dexter's Lab, while Foster's was on Teletoon.

You just didn't try hard enough.

Brolo

DeMoN wrote: »

Brolo wrote: »

canada having YTV and later Teletoon instead of Cartoon Network always sucked

I didn't get to see anything of Powerpuff girls, Samurai Jack, Dexter's Lab, Foster's

Also missed out on all of adult swim, toonami

YTV totally had Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack and Dexter's Lab, while Foster's was on Teletoon.

You just didn't try hard enough.

it didn't have them during their original airing periods

ElJeffe

Holy crap that picture of the Gems is fantastic.

I wish it was appropriately sized for desktop wallpaper, because, you know. I would totally make it my wallpaper.

ElJeffe

Also, for some reason, my eyeballs recently started paying attention to animation quality in ways they hadn't before, and it's made it a lot harder to ignore how static so many cartoons are. Adventure Time, much as I love it, spends a lot of time with one character's mouth moving while everything else on the screen is dead frozen. It makes up for it with some bad-ass action scenes, and it's far from the worst offender out of the toons I like (that's probably Legend of Korra), but once I saw it I couldn't unsee it.

Steven, by that metric, is pretty good, for the most part. Or at least it hides its staticness well.

Lasbrook

So they just re-ran Cat Fingers, one of the things Amethyst shapeshifts into is Purple Puma. Nice foreshadowing.

King Riptor

So they've introduced fusion to the show.

Meet Opal . She kicks ass and is Hawkeye
http://stevencrewniverse.tumblr.com/image/77776174611

pablo_price

yeah, this one is p awesome too:

King Riptor

The AV club is doing episode reviews now
http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/steven-universe-lion-2-movie-203778

Also some music from the sword fighters episode

aStoryAboutYou

Hope it's ok to revive this thread because I watched the first 17 episodes after intending to only watch an episode or two. This is delightful, and Opal being voiced by Aimee Mann made my day! Am I the only one who's inordinately happy that the fusion gems have their own distinct personalities rather than just being the 2 people existing in one body?

Had heard about the show itself because a friend of mine went to RISD and was in the same grade/same classes as Steven Sugar, Rebecca Sugar's brother/the basis for Steven/an artist for the show itself. Apparently, and unsurprisingly, he's a pretty groovy dude in real life too.

TankHammer

I didn't know he went to RISD! RISD is the only school I applied to that rejected me and therefore that means he is my mortal enemy.

Still cool to hear!

Mortal Sky

I'm a couple weeks behind but this show is consistently so so very good

King Riptor

Yes feel free to bump if you wanna contribute guys. I try to whenever new stuff airs or the blog update.

Im gonna revamp the OP as well if I can get to my laptop. Add dat music and the cool theme food they make

Naphtali

I really love the subtle world building they do in this show

Makes me want to know what happened in the past but it's unlikely we'll get an explanation any time soon

King Riptor

Roses Bat cave implies the gems have been around way longer than humans


Also that Rose Quartz was batman

Naphtali

The show has implied the gems have been around awhile, I was more referring to their decline (since it seemed like there used to be a lot more of them)