Don Bluth is Kickstarting a New Animated Film

[SmithyGCN]

Seems like Don is trying to bring out a new movie. An adaptation of his arcade classic: Dragon's Lair! Sadly, things aren't looking too hot for him right now due to there being only 12 days left and his goal isn't being reached.
Please! If you are a fan of classical animation or a fan of the Dragon's Lair games or just are a fan of Don Bluth, consider donating!

It's right here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/don...nav_search

I've already donated to it.

[tombmonkey]

As much as I love traditional animation and Don, and already threw a tenner at the ks, this looked like it would fail from the beggining.

The pitch video showed nothing new to get me excited, and it looked like it was right out of 80s trailers, which might have been the point, but it only helped to remind me how bad 80s trailers were.

There's a reason why 2D animation is nearly dead, with 3D you can hand a kid a good model and he will be doing decent animation in a couple years, in 2D in those 2 years you would be lucky, exceptionally skillful to have mastered the human figure enough to do animation; so needing more experienced workers makes for a very small pool of potential candidates, and being more experienced also means demanding more pay.

These days, I get my kick of traditional animation with stop motion, but even that these days means zbrushed 3D color printed heads for expressions.

[Dolphman]

The problem with 3D is that you are even more limited to what you can use when it comes to props, locations, and character models.
Garfield Show is very guilty of this, with models recycled and recoloured trying to brush them off as new characters.
For a self-aware cartoon, you'd think they'd make fun of it, but never did.
And Sonic Boom is just as bad, with one episode having cheap recolours of the same background characters, who were even recurring ones.
The main writer tried to excuse one scene featuring Knuckles with the same girl in both his arms as twins. Cue rolling eyes and faceplam.

2D animation is only nearly dead in western cinematic films. Japan, France, and Spain, still tend to have more 2D films than America. 
But there are issues with 2D, mostly being Adobe Flash, as the cartoons end up looking cheap and don't really fit TV or even film.
Canada is full of Flash animated cartoons that even Canadians hate them because of it. Man, Canadian cartoons used to be interesting.
French series, Wakfu gets a pass because they do put effort in animating it, going as far as bringing in guest animators from anime studios.

As cool as Don Bluth is. I'm a bit sad, as they only have nine days left and $189,399 so far. He made some great animated movies.
Too bad most of them suffered from meddling by studios, ending up with guilty pleasures and huge disappointments even he's ashamed of.

[tombmonkey]

Yeah there's still good 2D coming out in the west, but it's few and far in between.

This one was done in anime studio, and I might say color me impressed, I used anime studio for a small gig some 10 years ago, and boy was it buggy and sluggish. It's actually quite good that there's now a cheaper alternative to the $5000/seat monopoly that Toon Boom almost achieved.






The 2D counterpart of shows like garfield would be stuff like monster high, where they have the characters rigged from various angles and do everything with those same rigs, obviusly is cheaper to produce a 2D rig that a 3D one, but it's also far more limited.

Lately some shows have surfaced with pretty good animation, Steven Universe, Wander Galaxy and Star vs. the Forces of Evil are a joy to watch for the animation alone.

[Dolphman]

My god, those examples are gorgeous. As someone who wants to get into animation, I'll might actually save up and buy that program.
As Australian currency sucks compared to American. It sells for almost $440 AUD, compared to the $300 USD it mainly goes for.

It's funny too, because those films really put shows and movies that use Toon Boom (The Simpsons, The Princess and the Frog) to shame.
Something about the designs in them really appeal to me.

[tombmonkey]

Lol you think $440 AUD is bad? Esoteric Software Spine costed me CRC 250000.

But yeah, anime studio seems to be doing very well these days, but always try before you buy, but it's not like there are tons of options for traditional 2D animation, you either pick toon boom, anime studio or flash, which has been nearly abandoned by adobe.

[Koopaul]

Too bad Secret of Kells was a lousey movie. I mean it looks beautiful, but everything else about it sucked.

[SmithyGCN]

Well, it looks as though Don's not giving up. He's put it up on Indiegogo and it's gotten much more favorable results, but let's just wait and see. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/drago...-returns#/

Also, I have Secret of Kells, but haven't watched it yet (it's in storage and we're between homes right now), but it's bad?

There's also a program for 2d animation that you guys haven't mentioned yet that I use: Digicel Flipbook Studio.

[Koopaul]

The Secret of Kells is a beautiful movie that is wonderfully animated... But as a story its very disappointing.I didn't really grow attached to any character and I felt especially disatisfied that there was no real resolution to the conflict.

[SmithyGCN]

I'll still watch it for myself sometime, but thanks for your input, I'll keep it in mind.

[Skyla Doragono]

Honestly, while I'm happy to see Don Bluth still animating (grew up with his movies, man), I'd rather see him do something new. Like, have you guys seen the FNAF characters that someone drew in his style? I'd kill for something like that.