Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice

[Nepenthe]

No, that's not the excuse that companies use. That's the excuse that's been conjured up by a nostalgic public because people for some reason assume 3D is just lazy, quick, and without artistic merit since it's done in a computer. The reason companies use 3D is because traditional movies have been under-performing at the box office for years in lieu of 3D ones, and thus it's become the technological norm. It's a bit like asking why we use color now instead of going back to black and white.

[KHCast]

Weird since if lots of people seem to complain about 3D and are demanding or begging for traditional 2D, you'd think companies would want to capitalize on that market lol. Especially with big companies like Disney. Make a 3D and 2D film to please both audiences. Not like they probably couldn't if they wanted.

[Dejimon11]

They tried with Princess and the Frog and look how well that did. It did well but could of been better. Plus with CGI films making tons of money in the box office especially Frozen, Minions and Zootopia reaching over a billion why stop now? 

[Tara]

I imagine the reason they don't do that is because it's one of those things where people who complain about 3D don't make the investment to actually see or purchase 2D, traditionally animated films, so it doesn't really seem worth fulfilling that niche.

[KHCast]

1 minute ago, Dejimon11 said:

They tried with Princess and the Frog and look how well that did. It did well but could of been better. Plus with CGI films making tons of money in the box office especially Frozen, Minions and Zootopia reaching over a billion why stop now? 

I did say why not both, not one or the other. There are markets for both, and it's not like 2D /couldn't/ theoretically be really successful. It's that whole perfect pasta sauces mindset I think they'd benefit from.

[Nepenthe]

People complain about it, but when the chips were actually down people failed to put their money where their mouth was by not supporting Princess and the Frog or Winnie The Pooh as much as they did they did Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph, to say nothing of import films like Chico and Rita or The Illusionist. So what it amounts to is a bunch of nostalgic young adults yelling at clouds and lamenting 2D's death while not actually being monetarily willing to support it, nevermind the hyperbole of proclaiming its death when it's still everywhere on TV, YouTube, and in anime and such.

[KHCast]

2 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

People complain about it, but when the chips were actually down people failed to put their money where their mouth was by not supporting Princess and the Frog or Winnie The Pooh as much as they did they did Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph, to say nothing of import films like Chico and Rita or The Illusionist. So what it amounts to is a bunch of nostalgic young adults yelling at clouds and lamenting 2D's death while not actually being monetarily willing to actually support it, nevermind the hyperbole of proclaiming it's death when it's everywhere on TV, YouTube, and in anime and such.

When you put it like that, it reminds me a lot of the game industry honestly lol. Kinda sad how similar the two markets can be sometimes.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

Just because there seem to be a lot of people waxing poetic about how wonderful two-dimensional animation is doesn't mean it's actually going to make more money than 3D animation. If more people want to watch the 3D movie than the 2D one, there's just not much of a point of spending time on effort on the one that makes less money. Why make a 3D movie and a 2D movie when you could just make two 3D movies and make more money that way? And I say this as someone who really likes two-dimensional hand-drawn animation (significantly more than I like 3D animation in fact, even though I like that too).

I really hope that there eventually is a big enough market for 2D animated films to incentivize companies to make more, of course, but apparently that day isn't happened yet.

[KHCast]

I never said it would make more? Doesn't mean they couldn't still benefit or make money from it. Just cause a platformer won't make CoD levels of money or pass that game in sales doesn't mean they shouldn't still make it and try.

[Nepenthe]

The problem is that traditional animation lost its niche in being able to communicate realistic motion convincingly through imagined artwork. Our movies were drawn simply because that was what was most convenient and possible at the time, but no doubt if Walt with his technological progressive ideals had access to computers and CGI back then he'd take it in a heartbeat over 2D. This means there's little point in doing a traditional from a financial perspective outside of the craft being inherently appealing, but again this appeal isn't enough to bring audiences back to theaters in Zootopia numbers. Instead, I imagine what needs to happen is that there either needs to be more 2D films based on existing popular television properties (gimmicky and requires prior investment that general audiences won't be willing to expend), or there needs to be a shift towards more artistic and abstract-looking films that would be excessively difficult or inefficient to do in a 3D environment (general audiences don't like artsy films so lol) in order for traditional animation to actually regain a purpose in the theatrical circuit.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

I guess I think the difference is that the the 3D-animated-movie-watching audiences and 2D-animated-movie-watching audiences are probably extremely similar, like, an enormous amount of overlap. Even if there are more shooter fans than platformer fans, I would guess there are still at least a decent number of people who are more likely to buy a platformer than a shooter, but the number of people who like 2D animation but are so disinterested in 3D animation they're significantly less likely to watch 3D animated movies seems to be a lot smaller. I mean, both kinds of animated movies fill a very similar role, the only difference being the medium, and so they reach a similar audience. But for whatever reason, the 3D movies seem to be better at reaching this audience and thus have better sales figures. We haven't yet seen much proof of there being large numbers of people who are more interested in 2D movies than 3D ones, but at least going off sales numbers, it seems fairly likely that there are large numbers who are more interested in 3D ones.

I mean, yes, there are people out there who like 2D more than 3D, but as others have noted, if it isn't actually going to impact their buying choices so as to make them watch 2D films over 3D ones, they might as well not have that preference, as far as companies are concerned. Honestly, I doubt there are many fans of 2D animation that are so repulsed by 3D they'll refuse to watch amazingly animated and scripted films such as Inside Out or Zootopia just because they're CGI (I know I'm not!), but apparently, judging by the sales numbers of the most recent 2D animated flicks by Disney, there are people who are unimpressed and disinterested in the 2D stuff. Does that make sense? xP

[KHCast]

Well with Winnie the Pooh, didn't Disney basically dig their grave since it was released on the same week as Harry Potter? Idk, I get what you mean, and I guess I agree to a degree, but still I think a 2D film could bring in audiences if done and timed right. I mean plenty of children love the old school Disney films from what I've seen. 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

Haha, I hope you're right honestly xD I just can't blame companies for sticking with what seems to be bringing in the dough. Also, while I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of 2D theatrical movies, I'm really not that heartbroken because two-dimensional animation still exists in so many places other than theatrical films, so I can easily and happily wait a long time for them to come back, if they ever do.

[Shadowlax]

12 hours ago, Nepenthe said:

No, that's not the excuse that companies use. That's the excuse that's been conjured up by a nostalgic public because people for some reason assume 3D is just lazy, quick, and without artistic merit since it's done in a computer. The reason companies use 3D is because traditional movies have been under-performing at the box office for years in lieu of 3D ones, and thus it's become the technological norm. It's a bit like asking why we use color now instead of going back to black and white.

 

12 hours ago, Nepenthe said:

No, that's not the excuse that companies use. That's the excuse that's been conjured up by a nostalgic public because people for some reason assume 3D is just lazy, quick, and without artistic merit since it's done in a computer. The reason companies use 3D is because traditional movies have been under-performing at the box office for years in lieu of 3D ones, and thus it's become the technological norm. It's a bit like asking why we use color now instead of going back to black and white.

I mean thats also true but in a long run 3d actually is cheaper. That said if 2d movies picked up steam again im sure movies would start it back up. But is in the long run potentially cheaper to use 3d assets. 

I think its less of an incentive and more of a bonus

[Nepenthe]

59 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

I mean thats also true but in a long run 3d actually is cheaper.

No, it's not. 2D animation is cheaper to produce- full stop. Here's the production budget of the last high profile traditionally animated releases followed by CGI films from the big three makers (WDAS, Pixar, DWA) in or around that same year:

Quote

Princess and the Frog (Dec. 11, 2009): $105 million

 

Bolt (Nov 21, 2008): $150 million

Up (May 29, 2009): $175 million

Monsters Vs. Aliens (Mar 27, 2009): $175 million

 

Quote

 

Winnie The Pooh (July 15, 2011): $30 million

 

Tangled (Nov. 24, 2010): $260 million

Cars 2 (June 24, 2011): $200 million

Kung Fu Panda 2 (May 26, 2011): $150 million

 

You only really start getting exceedingly low budgets with Blue Sky Studios and Illumination Entertainment, but this isn't due to the cost of the medium so much as lower workloads, technological lagging, and massive outsourcing of the production phase to Asia. If they were doing the same with traditional films then you could probably average less for a film budget than what Winnie The Pooh did.

And then there's obvious question of: if 3D is cheaper to produce, why is the majority of the televised animated content still done in 2D?

[Multikaris]

12 hours ago, KHCast said:

Well with Winnie the Pooh, didn't Disney basically dig their grave since it was released on the same week as Harry Potter? Idk, I get what you mean, and I guess I agree to a degree, but still I think a 2D film could bring in audiences if done and timed right. I mean plenty of children love the old school Disney films from what I've seen. 

Pooh was a budget feature, not intended to be much. (P.S. I hope Moana bombs)

 

Meanwhile, on Sonic Boom, we have a number of characters who are recycled models, named ones, even. Like Charlie's wife Belinda or Justin Beaver's manager. The only ones who don't fall victim to this are the main SEGA-ish cast and the author avatar trio.

[Kuzu]

@Nepenthe

Do you have any sources on the process of 3D and 2D animation? I'm actually curious now.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Nepenthe]

Here's a DreamWorks featurette about the making of a 3D feature.

It's roughly the same as a traditional feature: pre-production (script, storyboarding/animatics, art direction), production (animation), and post-production (clean-up, scoring), but due to the technological specialization necessary to make 3D, there's additional processes in these steps that are completely absent from traditional animation. There's no inherent need to rig or add hair and cloth dynamics to the characters in a traditional film because all movement and the definition of what a character looks like is simply defined by the drawings and color. All background work in traditional films is done by paintings, so Photoshop effectively takes care of the environment modeller, environment texture artist, and lighter's jobs all at once and at a much faster pace.

Furthermore, a 3D pipeline has many concurrent responsibilities while traditional animation is more sequential. For example, once a model is rigged it's sent off to the animators for animation, but if it's broken or doesn't allow for the movement necessary to get the shot they want, it gets sent back to be fixed. Colors and textures may not be on a character model while animation is being done, so these character models are swapped in and out on rigs so that they're constantly updated without messing up the animation. There's many steps where everyone is working at the same time and assets are being passed back and forth over time. In traditional animation, each process is more dependent upon the other's completion. In scenes where characters are interacting with the environment, that background needs to be blocked in exactly, even if it's not painted in, so you don't get this issue where characters are cut off for no reason. Before a character can be colored, it needs to be cleaned up, and before that can happen the character needs to be animated.

So 3D is extremely more specialized than traditional animation needs to be....which is why on average it's more expensive to produce. xP

[Jason Berry]

Well, Im at E3 and have played a bit of the demo, but need to play more due to the huge lunes around the Atlus boith, I could only play two of the 5 (or more) levels shown in the demo so a write up will have to wait. The two levels I played were a tunnel level and a straight 2D level from the main game. They both play very similar to the previous game but with the fire and ice element added to make things more tricky.  The 2D level was much more straightfoward with optional paths you COULD take, but don't have to. Ill give a lot more detail in my write up later.

[Tails spin]

2 minutes ago, Jason the Jackass said:

Well, Im at E3 and have played a bit of the demo, but need to play more due to the huge lunes around the Atlus boith, I could only play two of the 5 (or more) levels shown in the demo so a write up will have to wait. The two levels I played were a tunnel level and a straight 2D level from the main game. They both play very similar to the previous game but with the fire and ice element added to make things more tricky.  The 2D level was much more straightfoward with optional paths you COULD take, but don't have to. Ill give a lot more detail in my write up later.

did you happen to be able to record the footage?

so they have 5 levels playable. hmm.

Can't wait for your write up!

[Tara]

So it basically plays exactly like we thought it would?

[Graystripe2000]

Just now, Tara said:

So it basically plays exacrly like we thought it would?

Well, according to a guy on Twitter, it feels different, both from SC and other Sonic games. 

[Tara]

2 minutes ago, Operationgamer17 said:

Well, according to a guy on Twitter, it feels different, both from SC and other Sonic games. 

Well, I was only going off of what Jason said.  If there's two people reporting differently in that regard, then that makes things somewhat interesting.

[Badnik Mechanic]

6 minutes ago, Tara said:

Well, I was only going off of what Jason said.  If there's two people reporting differently in that regard, then that makes things somewhat interesting.

That other guy is another TSS staffer.

Also for info.

 

[Jason Berry]

The levels you see in the trailer are what's playable in the E3 demo.

Came back to try more. levels. There NINE to try at E3 all from the first world. Considering SC Had about 4 or less levels per world, that's a goid sign.