Netflix's The Dragon Prince

It mainly reminds me of Fire Emblem Echoes and it wasn't good there either.

I just hope it’s not Berserk levels of bad animation.

Yeah, normally I can't judge animation that well.

But watching that video felt noticeably choppy.

I feel my initial hype-level dropping.

It's not just the choppiness; something just feels off about a lot of shots. Blink and you'll miss it, but at around 0:30, in the fight scene in the castle hallway, it looks like everyone was rendered as flat images and placed in a 3D scene.

The more I watch the trailer, the less noticeable the low framerate is, strangely. Watching on my phone also helps. It could be gotten used to.

Yea this cell shaded 3d animation is such a hit or miss for me, mostly miss. It's like Archer or one of the spiderman tv series. I personally find it unappealing. Also the setting is uninspired to me,tired of Medieval Euro-whatever being the go to fantasy setting. With that the character designs look really good and the action intriguing. Since it's on Netflix, it'll be easy to check out

Ironic coming from the same guy who brought us avatar, a not medival Euro setting. I guess there playing it safe with this one.

The animation reminds me of Polygon Pictures output. Stuff like Knights of Sidonia, which is great for rendering mechanical items, cityscapes, and the inorganic (which is good because Sidonia is chock full of Scenery Porn and so many details in its setting). But we aren't there technology wise to replace conventional hand drawn for people just yet. We've come a long way, but not there yet.

Edited by Beatman1 on Jul 22nd 2018 at 10:28:14 AM

While I hate the animation on this show... this actually gives me hope the writing will be good. Why? Because all the other Avatar alumni were animators who could give terrific animation with a barebones mediocre story. Im hoping this will have terrific writing to make up for the lacking animation.

I'm genuinely curious: are there any other shows you would say had good to great writing with bad or mediocre animation?

I want to say Bojack Horseman? Though it does manage an Animation Bump at least once a season.

There are actually none that come to mind at the moment but Im just trying to be optimistic about this one.

I'm not @Aegis P, but I have heard great things about Transformers: Beast Wars (1996) being a great show despite the animation being subpar. Same thing for ReBoot.

I would also say The Spectacular Spider-Man counts. The show had great fight scenes, characters, and writing. However, it wasn't necessarily nice to look at. Then again, maybe that's more about the art style than anything else.

Oh and South Park if you want to count that one.

Edited by deuteragonist on Jul 22nd 2018 at 10:01:15 AM

I've heard the Jay Ward shows count as such shows, even though the art has a charm to it.

ETA: The animation in Beast Wars and Reboot was actually really good for the time. After all, the latter was TV's first fully CGI cartoon show.

Edited by Buzzinator on Jul 22nd 2018 at 1:08:17 PM

Well the animations not subpar, it’s actually quite advanced, best in the business.

In 1996.

The animation is pretty decent all things considered especially the facial animations which are very expressive.

It’s just the age is very visible.

Actually deutagonist you have given me an idea. No, Spectacular Spiderman doesnt count. Its one of the most fluid and impressively animated shows. No. What DOES count are the X-Men and Spiderman cartoons from the 90's. They were so good in spite of being so terribly animated that I think they are the perfect example of what I mean.

Fair enough.

I could see that. I actually heard Spiderman: The Animated Series reused a lot of its animation.

[1] [2] The named characters so far: Callum, Ezran (holding Bait), Rayla, and Runaan.

The official twitter held a poll the other day. They just released some art refs of the winning character, Rayla.

Don't know what to say. The writing could be great and overshadow the animation but being this choppy doesn't help. Worst of all, I'm the one whose favourite animation studio uses choppy CGI and I think this looks off putting.

Holy beans, Rayla only has four fingers on each hand.

Two new character reveals! Claudia, the dark magic user, and Soren, the swordsman. Both appeared in the trailer. And they're siblings!

Edited by Twiddler on Aug 7th 2018 at 2:31:43 AM

Another character reveal: King Harrow

New character reveal: Runaan

Three character reveals! Callum, Ezran, and Bait