CW's Flash

They wouldn't have the budget for Plastic Man, but Elongated Man tends to be a lot more reserved in his stretchiness. They should be fine.

There are limits to that budget. For all of the amazing things we see on this show:

• Gorilla Grodd is almost always obscured in shadow and, despite being one of Flash's classic villains, only appears for about 3 episodes out of 3 seasons, compared to human antagonists like Thawne and Cold.
• The speedster fights should almost always be in CGI, and yet we get a lot of moments where the awesome speed fight stops so Barry can go into fisticuffs, which really doesn't make any sense when he can blitz the crap out of almost anyone. A lot of the instances where Barry appears to be stupidly letting his guard down or not reacting to things he should be able to react to, I would argue, are probably due to the budget - anytime Barry gets pinned in fights by someone he should be faster then, it's probably because they get to save money on animating Barry's super speed.
  • Look at how short some of the fights are (like when they try to gank Savitar in the Season 3 finale, or when they specifically have a part of the battle with Thawne devoted to Oliver fighting him H 2 H and Ronnie getting knocked away without doing much of anything)
• Savitar's suit - it looked a lot more organic at first, when it's all CGI. Halfway through Season 3 it stops being CGI because it's too expensive to make Savitar a CGI-generated monster and it became an actual suit.
• Compare the length of action scenes in any given episodes to the length of scenes where Barry, Joe, and any of the other characters are having a heartfelt conversation, or a melodramatic conversation about romance/responsibility/what have you.

edited 14th Jul '17 5:51:33 AM by Soble

Thinking about having Elongated Man on the Flash; I like that because he actually started out as a supporting character in the Flash comics; Barry Allen and Ralph Dibny both share a co-creator Carmine Infantino.

He should've been on the Flash from the start.

Vibe and Killer Frost weren't supporting characters for the Flash until the 2014 series.

I saw a lot of people complaining because they don't want more members of the S.T.A.R. Labs team.

Ralph was listed as being one of the 17 casualties of the accelerator explosion, along with incorrectly listed Ronnie Raymond (ask me about my theory for that tho) and Retconned into having been in hawaii at the time and then murdered Al Rothstein.

What would make stretching any more difficult to portray then, say, Sand Demon turning his body into flying sand, or Caitlin creating a giant moving ice ramp she can ride on?

The show has been pretty good about managing budget for some big scale special effects. They had a kaiju, an army of gorillas, a Clayface-esque tar monster and they've also used a number of full CG action scenes. With a stretchy superhero they just need to keep the guy in a normal shape until he uses his powers, rather than the common "constantly malformed" look in the comics.

Those are all perfectly acceptable ways of getting around a limited budget and very tight turnaround on episodes. I'm not expecting a human cartoon who stretches all the time just because he can.

Both of those involve constructs that aren't supposed to have mostly believable human features, for one - a guy made of sand can have their features blend together, whereas someone like Enlongated Man has to believably begin morphing from a regular human body, retain that human sheen and texture while warping and still simultaneously partially retaining those regular human features without looking like plastic, and end up with an altered appearance that doesn't make them a laughingstock.

Having shapeshifters be made out of stuff that isn't person is a common way character designers cheat around the fact that shapeshifting of any kind in CGI takes a lot of meticulous animation to look adequate and not fall neck deep into the Uncanny Valley. Even in 2D, it's a power that commonly requires more detailed (and often expensive) animation than normal to render well. Even way back in the 90's, there's a reason why one of the few times WB hired the far more expensive Tokyo Movie Shinsha to animate for Batman The Animated Series was to pull off the spectacle of the very first Clayface episode.

It's why it's a common recipient of Coconut Superpowers. Or a single transformation sequence used as Stock Footage. Or in stuff like Teen Titans, changes that are animated in frenetic ways that intentionally contrast the rest of the animation.

edited 15th Jul '17 12:48:13 AM by KnownUnknown

He'll probably just stretch rather than shapechange, possibly wear a one-piece costume so that they can get away with a simpler texture which is going to be a lot easier to light semirealistically. I doubt his face or hands will stretch much, either. Which would be in character for Elongated Man. Ralph Dibny's within scope for the show, provided they don't overuse him, possibly focusing on his detective skills and holding off a while before he gets his powers.

Isn't that how it works in the comics? He wears a standard superhero unitard that stretches along with his body, so when he stretches his limbs or his torso, you don't actually see human flesh stretching?

That sounds right

Like◊ this.

Personally I've been surprised at how the shows are able to show characters like Commander Steel, Firestorm and Iron Man The Atom with regularity. A stretchy hero may be something new but it's not entirely out of the range of possibility. In fact, they kind of did something similar with Atom Smasher, considering he changes size and shape a little. Again, none of this is particularly movie-quality but it compensates with the visuals themselves. Now depicting Green Lantern might start pushing the boundaries, but at this point there is little that television is unable to produce compared to movies.

I feel like Green Lantern wouldn't be that difficult compared to Grodd or King Shark. They just need polygons and generic glowy effects, not really complicated textures, etc.

Polygons would only work if it was Hal Jordan. Which would be fine, since they're also doing Barry Allen and Jay Garrick.

My favourite interpretations of Hal Jordan are the ones where he has infinite willpower, no fear, and absolutely no imagination whatsoever. In the Justice League Heroes game, for instance, where John Stewart (the default Lantern in the game, because DCAU) has an intricate schematic of a this ornate, handcrafted hammer, while the unlockable Kyle Rayner has a big cartoon mallet, and Hal Jordan has...a block. Like, a cube. That was great.

edited 16th Jul '17 3:05:35 PM by Unsung

The issue with Green Lantern is that he would be the culmination of all of the most expensive special effects imaginable. A Green Lantern flies (meaning wire work), their constructs glow (meaning on set lighting effects), their constructs are purpose specific (meaning their actions sequences take time to design) and of course the CG for their constructs. Even live action Superman TV shows, including Supergirl, generally resort to back alley fist fights.

Eh. Just have them fly less often, or make it look less like flying (Green Lanterns have a perfect excuse to just stand in the middle of an energy bubble and that's what's flying). And most of their effects can just boil down to some big object hitting their opponent and sending them flying, which can be accomplished in the usual, practical manner...with a green light on the set, and the rest done in post. Green Lantern constructs don't have to be detailed or realistically lit. This could be very simple, just so long as the writers bore that in mind.

I'm sure it's probably been done in the comics at some point, but it'd be kinda neat to have a Green Lantern whose constructs look like something out of a Space Invaders era video game.

At a certain point you are neutering everything that makes Green Lantern fun, it's all about the crazy, goofy constructs they come up with. That was a major complaint in the first season of Justice League, as all John Stewart would do is defensive spheres, cutting lasers and bubbles to grab things, likely because of what I was talking about regarding time and effort. We want to see fists, boxing gloves, swords, drills, salad tongs, etc.

Agreed. Green Lantern needs the freedom to flex his imagination, which will be difficult to do on a TV budget.

My second post was actually a justification for how you can do that. Big glowing imaginary things that fly are actually easier to animate than more realistic effects, because they're supposed to look imaginary.

The 2011 movie had a feature budget and those effects still looked like garbage. It wouldn't be that hard to top them if only because the CW audience is going to be more forgiving. The issue here is one of planning, not so much the CG itself.

edited 17th Jul '17 1:02:05 PM by Unsung

Imaginary stuff still has to mesh visually with the world around them, and animating 3D shapes in motion alongside live action actors is already tricky enough.

I'm aware of the challenges, but this is actually less work than things they've already done if they stage it well. Editing is the key, limiting the amount of time they're on screen together while still preserving the flow of the action between cuts. And if these things look like big glowing simplified versions of real objects instead of being especially detailed perfect, real-world versions of those things, that's okay. The way Lantern constructs works gives them license to go a little cartoony, a little off-model.

Nobody's expecting it to be flawless, but it's not insurmountable. It's well within the scope of things they're already doing on a regular basis, but they'd have to choose— but they've never had the time or budget to do it all every episode anyway.

edited 17th Jul '17 3:13:07 PM by Unsung

So a short trailer for Season 4 was just released:

Based on it, I have a theory that their solution to Barry being stuck in the Speed Force might be to simply pull a Harrison Wells and bring in a different Barry from another Earth.

Let's cast a black man in the lead role for a change? That's progressive and it even makes sense given the character's history! How about we bring back last season's main character with an alternate universe doppelganger?

Or maybe Wally just sucks as The Flash?

No, that's impossible. Nobody can suck at being The Flash more than Barry Allen.

edited 22nd Jul '17 8:35:21 PM by Soble