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Can I say, doing things "incorrectly" in art is so underrated. Like in the old version his arm is so fcked up in the placement. That would be such an uncomfortable pose if you think about it yet the arm makes a perfect arc to guide your eye from Hacker's face, down the arm and to the button.

And just as you're finished looking at the button, the green bubbles show up and guide your eye down to Control Central. In my opinion the bubbles come out too slowly in the new version and it kind of ruins it.

Also there are three green things on screen here, the planet, the sky, the little aurora thing and Hacker and in the new version they all kinda melt together. The contrast isn't great.

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Think you can possibly break down why cyberflash episodes look so worse compared to Nelvana cyberchase episodes? I've been paying attention to the episodes and I think it's the poor rigs, tweaning, and adding too detail to things originally simplied in Nelvana eps (Digit's copter for example). But that's me. What about you?

It's not necessarily bad rigs? Well let me say it this way. The kids in my opinion look absolutely fine 90% of the time. Their designs are way simpler so they're not as impacted by the cost saving measures as... well, anyone else (coughHackercough). I would not be surprised if they basically had the same naked rig copy and pasted with the hair and clothes put on after. That would definitely save time from having three unique rigs.

I will use Hacker as the counter example because I've spent more time looking at him, but the way they translated his model was simply not good. But more than that, I think his design is just much harder to make a good rig out of. He is such a flat design by nature you can't just copy and paste the same quickly made rig for every situation and have it look okay. Nelvana's animators were making tweaks to his design in pretty much every scene just to get it to look good for that pose/ from that angle. You can absolutely make a great rig for Hacker, but its going to take a lot of effort.

If you want to see an example of how a ToonBoom rig can be pretty damn detailed might I promote a buddy of mine? She is doing her own show using ToonBoom right now. There is a lot of flexibility of animators are given enough time and resources to go all out.

What I mean to say is that the rigs are, for the most part doing their job, but their job has been extremely limited due to the new goal of the show's production to make the episodes quickly and cheaply because there's not much money in the bank. There is probably an art direction order for the storyboarders to do bare minimum and that would extent to the animations as they work within the confines of the storyboards.

But alright enough semantics, everyone knows this show has no money for fancy complex rigs, but what does that mean in execution? I think the opening is the best way to compare because it follows the template of the original show.

The scene where the kids intercept Hacker's green bubble attack and the screen cracks. In the original, he is drawn to take up the full screen and there's a marvelous sense of anticipation in how he moves.

This is the first frame of animation for the new and old versions.

In the next unique frame old Hacker bites down and continues to fold in on himself, increasing the sense of anticipation while new Hacker starts to expand out into the shocked pose immediately.

By the time the screen starts to crack, new Hacker has already reached the peak of his move and on his way down while old Hacker is only about halfway there.

The next few frames of new Hacker basically stay the same, the rig has nowhere else to go while old Hacker keeps going and reaches his peak.

In the next few frames old Hacker comes down slightly from the peak and brings his arms up (actually I think this was a bad move on Nelvana's part because the animation started with his moving them down and now he's back up within a second and a half, but that is probably a storyboarding issue) whereas new Hacker still has nowhere else to go. Now scroll back up to the first frame and notice how little new Hacker has changed overall.

Actually it is super weird because if you look at Delete beside him, Delete is actually showing decent anticipation. I really think there was some struggle with Hacker's design and honestly Buzz is probably having it even worse this scene.

But alright. For any kids fans out there. They don't do much expression and body language honestly, even in the old show they didn't "need" that much anticipation, but still had it subtly. Maybe you can remember a scene where the kids would scrunch their face up slightly and close their eyes and then open them again to transition into a new facial expression. Was kind of a running technique in the original show used on basically every character. To my memory, they don't use it anymore.

But okay, there's another example from the opening.

New Inez, drops right down while old Inez flies out head first.

And then she scrunches up all the way. Anticipation!

Then landing. Meanwhile new Inez has not changed. Honestly the old animation was low budget too, if it were me, I think another frame of her knee bending slightly as she lands before standing upright again would fit but maybe that was an intentional production choice I don't know. Old Cyberchase didn't really use any smears either.

And since you mentioned Digit, here is our boid.

A scene like this, in a production with more budget would just be hand drawn. It is ToonBoom, that is more than possible and a very okay technique to supplement some of the more unavoidable shortcomings of ridges.

Old Digit's wings are super off model, way too big for his body and way bigger than how they usually are, but that's alright because in this frame it looks very good. Animation is supposed to have that flexibility.

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From someone who likes Cyberchase just you and is focused on animation, you have your own thoughts on Season 5's animation and why it's so much worse than any other Nelvana season? I heard it was due to them switching from animating from pencils to pens and markers, but there's more errors beyond that that not even Season 1 had (such as shading errors).

To be clear, I’m just a causal animation fan. I don’t have professional training, nor have I done a whole ton of research into the production side of this show. That being said, I feel 99% sure that only the original pilot was cel animation. Everything else looks digitally colored to me due to the brightness of the colors and lack of a grainy texture a lot of cel animation produced. I feel like even the aired version of the pilot was traced over on the computer, so in the end only the formerly lost version features cel animation.

In my personal opinion, the drop in quality would either be due to changes in management, rushed scheduling, lack of budget etc, or maybe it was due to the change in director, away from Larry Jacobs. I don’t know who storyboarded the show during this time, but story boarding and directing also has a huge impact on how a show feels when it’s presented. I only grew up with the first four seasons so I’ll have to rewatch the fifth and really examine it to speak in more detail, but my instinct says management.

To me this makes sense seeing how there is a one year gap between season 4 and 5. Their funding probably significantly shrunk after the first grant and eventually that bled into the production quality, it’s probably also why they changed studios with the next season and switch to flash which was super typical of Canadian animation during that time. I have no evidence for any of this, it’s just my theorizing.

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Happy B-Day, Hacker 🎊

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Artfight for @galaxymew

Go check out Eventide on webtoons!

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Artfight for @loonykatz < 3

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so sorry for the spam likes ^^;

Appreciate you < 3 < 3 < 3

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Hit me up x I’ll defend any attacks I get

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Aw yesss, finally! < 3 Thank you for your service :3

Hey new crookedstar map!

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OH MY GOSHHHH,, PLSSSS DRAW MORE PIKMIN STUFF

Sob I’m sorry I’ve never actually played any of the games. I just drew it as a commission