Firefly- The Animated Series
POSTED BY: Mangolo
UPDATED: Friday, February 2, 2007 15:08
VIEWED: 35432
PAGE 4 of 12
Quote:Okay, I'm officially impressed. Honestly, I'd love to see a short "test animation" of the style shown in the pics you posted, though I imagine you'd need permission (and a budget) to do even that much. If you can make "real humans" move and emote as convincingly as these characters seem to, you could have a winner.
Originally posted by Mangolo:Quote:
Originally posted by DonCoat:
I'd welcome it, but... (snip)
I totally understand your concerns:
1. We'd only move forward with Joss and his writing team involved
2. We'd market this to the same audience that FFTOS was targeting. Indeed, this is not a proven animation market. We did fail at our attempts to make a seperate animated TV show with the same demographic, but our financial situation has changed and the venues for the show has changed. Time slots are going to be a secondary market. Downloads and on demand television will be dominant, especially for our market demographic.
3. CG tends to be expensive, but compositing between CG and live action is just as expensive. The blend between the CG and our style of animation seems to work fine. Obviously it wouldn't work with other styles of animation.
4. We are an independent studio. We'd finance this on our own. We have had a track record of successful productions in many parts of the industry. I think waiting for the networks to come around on this show is not realistic nor letting them have any control would be prudent (given the history). We do have connections with Miyazaki's studios, but design would come from ourselves and Jean Moebius Giraud who is working on our current project with us.
Miyazaki is a magic word for me, so your connections there are most impressive. Obviously his style is quite different from what you propose, but one thing Miyazaki does is give the characters fully-realized personalities and expressions. There's a scene in "Spirited Away" that really struck me. As the family is walking through the tunnel into the magical world, the little girl's body language is wonderfully handled. Very little dialog but so much is communicated. That's the kind of work I'd be looking for from you.
I'm still not entirely clear on how you'd structure this, though. I'd have no problem paying a fair price to download episodes, but I wonder whether this distribution channel is mature enough to succeed. I'm not a user of on-demand services (my cable card doesn't support them).
Which leads to my next concern. How would this model lead to any growth in the fan base? Sure, we existing, content-starved Browncoats would do our part. But unless this project could expand the audience, it would seem unlikely to turn FF into the kind of mass market hit we'd all like to see it become. Internet downloads and on-demand haven't ever produced such a phenomenon, as far as I know. Yes, it would be great if FF was the first to do so, but what are the odds?
Oh, one other thing: it would be silly to do this project unless it was produced in full-resolution high-def widescreen format. But I'm sure that's a given already.
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I'm pointin' right at it!
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Just one other comment while I'm thinking about it.
I really, really appreciate that you've brought this in front of us (somewhat nutty) fans for comment and input. If this works out it will be great to feel we've had some influence on the project, and hopefully made the product even better.
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I'm pointin' right at it!
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I would definitely watch. Hell I would watch sock puppet theater if it was about the verse.
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Quote:
Originally posted by DonCoat:
Yes, it would be great if FF was the first to do so, but what are the odds?
Oh, one other thing: it would be silly to do this project unless it was produced in full-resolution high-def widescreen format. But I'm sure that's a given already.
One of the great things about playing with your own money is that you can play the odds as you see fit (studio executives rarely risk anything)
We will producing this like all our other current projects. In Hi Def.
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I say your on the right beat. I do Maya 6.0 and Lightwave btw :) I wonder if we could put together a group of 200ppl to work on the series. You remember the Halo 2 animations don't you? Well, with grade a graphics, which takes nothing more than time and effort, that which we have :). We could make it look downright real. real enough anyways. If we could get the cast to do voice overs, we could do it as a non-profit thing. That's where the 200ppl come in :P since we'd all just be doing what we can as we can. I believe after a years worth of work on the verse ships and crew, then we could follow with animations every month or so at the very least. Either a 30minz episode every week or a movie every month would be great. But I do wonder about the time it would take to create the verse and the crew, cuz that would be the biggest portion of production. But once we got all that implimented, animating our creations should go pretty smoothly. I'm willing to help anyways, SHINY IDEA!!!
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I'd probably watch, but personally I can't imagine this show animated. BUFFY has a pretty loyal fanbase, too, and the plans for an animated series fell through anyway.
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No offense but I just hate the Idea of seeing Mal animated, Nathan Fillon is so great at what he does, it just wouldn't do him justice to be turned into a cartoon.
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Interesting enough there was going to be an animated DVD prequel to Serenity (like what they did for Chronicles of Riddick) but it didn't happen and it become the Serenity comic mini-series instead.
There's a bit about what happened back in 2004.
http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/rage/110229939997661.htm
Quote:
Serenity Now
The recent delay of Joss Whedon’s Serenity isn’t the only intrigue taking place behind the scenes. Word is going around that Universal wanted to do a Serenity animated feature film direct to DVD, in the vein of The Animatrix or The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury. And apparently, they were serious enough to commission a script. The writer chosen for this project was Brett Matthews, who wrote an episode of Firefly and also provided the script for Dark Fury. Matthews and Whedon came up with a story for the Serenity animated feature and Matthews was set to tackle the script.
However, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the Serenity animated feature isn’t happening. But that doesn’t mean this story won’t see the light of day. Dark Horse is rumored to be very interested in using the story Matthews and Whedon came up with as the basis for their first Serenity miniseries. If it happens, look for the miniseries to be written by Matthews, who already has a few comic scripts under his belt, including the Marvel Knights Spider-Man/Wolverine miniseries that came out last year.
This Has A “Reaver Nation” Factor of Eight Out of Ten,
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Quote:
Originally posted by BonaNaCroin:
This might sound blasphemous but a possibility might be to have a differant crew.
That's not an idea to be dismissed out of hand, for many reasons. Another is that a new, interesting (but what else, if Joss is involved?) animated cast might be easier for fans to accept than an animated version of the familiar crew. Yet another reason is that if all went really well, you could bring the original crew back for a live action sequel while continuing the animated series at the same time!
Over here http://www.fireflyfans.net/thread.asp?b=2&t=26434 is a thread about what happened to the Operative after the BDM. Did he fall on his sword? Or... something more interesting? Somehow or other, I think that could work better as an animated series than a direct sequel to Firefly would.
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I'm looking forward to it! If Joss and co. write it, and the original cast is voicing, it's a no-brainer.
And to all those that say no way, just watch it with your eyes closed if you dare. It will be just fine, if you ask me. After all, if it's a question of no Firefly or animated Firefly, I'd bet you animated Firefly wins hands down.
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