Show That Have Overstayed Their Welcome

[charlietheowl]

I just thought since they held out until 2009 or 2010 before making the switch that it meant they decided to stick with the models. Maybe there was a change in the ownership that made them decide to finally make the switch.

 

[Drtooth]

I still can't believe they made that switch, as the use of the models was really what set them up apart from most other children's programming. Now with CGI it just looks like any other show.

Hit forced everything to CGI. Fireman Sam too. Hit REALLY screwed up Thomas... yet the merchandise is actually accessible, so that's a trade off.

But the CGI doesn't bug me half as much as how freaking dumbed down the show became. Yet, it isn't some cheap, crappy knockoff like Jay Jay the Jet Plane. I'll give it that. At least the original one is back, I guess.

 

[mr3urious]

Not to mention, the animation company that produces Thomas is from Canada, so they save even more money due to Canadian tax incentives.

 

[Drtooth]

Actually, CGI being cheap is kinda a myth, sometimes true depending. Movies that use CGI graphics aren't exactly the lowest production value things in the world (look at Transformers... or better yet, the money pit known as Green Lantern). The jury is out on how it's cost effective as a weekly cartoon series. I don't see how this is all too much cheaper than using the models they used to. I think it has more to do with it looking flashier and more modern than anything else.

The funny thing is, I remember a Thomas and the Magic Railroad movie review from (best as I can remember) Ebert and Roper, and the complaint was that Thomas's mouth didn't move. Like they were completely alien to the concept of the show. Of course, I never saw the movie, so I don't know how they applied it there.

But the thing I really hated about the new Thomas episodes? Those Blues Clues/Dora like games in between the skits. Still better than Jay Jay the Jetplane. Ugh.

 

[Scooterforever]

Hit forced everything to CGI. Fireman Sam too. Hit REALLY screwed up Thomas... yet the merchandise is actually accessible, so that's a trade off.

But the CGI doesn't bug me half as much as how freaking dumbed down the show became. Yet, it isn't some cheap, crappy knockoff like Jay Jay the Jet Plane. I'll give it that. At least the original one is back, I guess.

Yeah, my niece watches Sprout and I think Fireman Sam looks TERRIBLE in CGI. There's still something special about the old stop-motion tech that makes things like the films of Henry Selick, Nick Park, and Tim Burton so spellbinding.

 

[Drtooth]

British preschool shows were all about stop motion. We got a tiny sample of them over here. I'm not one to demonize CGI at all. When done right, it looks amazing. But Fireman Sam and Thomas lost their charm as CGI. Thomas especially. The whole appeal of Thomas was that they were model trains being narrated. Now they have their own voices. Doesn't work for me at all. Then again, I hated the new narrator they had with that thick American accent that made "Thomas was very cross" sound like nails on a chalk board.

But then again, Hit screws up everything it touches. Look how it released Fraggle Rock the complete series in crappy packaging before it released season 4.

 

[D'Snowth]

It's cheaper in that it requires a lot less work from people that it would, say, Claymation or stop-motion, or even traditional hand-drawn animation, all of which requires a number of people sweating and toiling over the painstaking techniques.

 

[Drtooth]

Good CGI is expensive. And it requires just as much skill to program wire frames and texture. Sure, Max from Blue Tax and Ratatoing may be done on a budget of 5 bucks and a half eaten sandwich, but Green Lantern didn't lose a crapload of money for the effects being cheap. I'm sure that Thanos at the end of The Avengers cost a fortune just appearing for barely a minute. And of course, the unproduced episode of Powerpuff Girls that was unproduced due to the high cost of animating the entire thing in CGI. The entire thing has become demonized because of overuse, I agree. Especially when these shows make the switch and its noticeable.

Stop motion animation is HARD! It's extremely taxing and time consuming, and you so much as bump the table, you lose a day's work. I can see why they forced that upon Fireman Sam. But Thomas was just done to look flashy. I'm sure they have a relatively respectable budget and things go haywire with the models... but I can't see the CGI being that much less than train models with interchangeable faces and unmoving plasticine people. They made the switch to make it look more cartoony and animated, and that lost the charm as far as I'm concerned. It didn't matter that the mouths didn't move. They weren't supposed to. And they weren't supposed to have individual voices and voice actors. But then again, if you look at what they did with Thomas, that's a drop in the bucket.

 

[mr3urious]

Good CGI is expensive. And it requires just as much skill to program wire frames and texture.

Didn't you say on another thread that the reason why the Abby's Flying Fairy School segments were repeated so often was because they were so expensive to produce?

 

[Drtooth]

Didn't you say on another thread that the reason why the Abby's Flying Fairy School segments were repeated so often was because they were so expensive to produce?

Well, it is Sesame Workshop. Everything is rerun because it's expensive to produce. But Abby must have a big budget. It's very good, very detailed CGI. That doesn't come cheap. It's not quite Pixar quality, but it looks much more detailed than the average CGI television show.