This past week some pretty important stuff has gone down. Stuff that will change our country, and the world as a whole.
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That's right! The reboot of Rainbow Brite aired on the 6th this week!
For those un-familiar, Rainbow Brite made her debut in 1984, making the franchise 30 years old now! Interestingly enough, the franchise was not created by a toy company but rather by Hallmark Cards. Different toy manufacturers partnered with Hallmark Cards to create various toys featuring the property.
Quite a few classic 80's franchises have been getting reboots. My Little Pony, Transformers, GI Joe, Carebears - the list goes on. But what makes Rainbow Brite interesting is that the new series isn't for television, rather, it is for Hallmark's media streaming site Feeln. The show is produced in-house, likely with Adobe Flash from the look of it.
This is a preview for it, made entirely of clips from the first episode. I'll get this out of the way now, the animation doesn't look so good. Having used my super sleuth skills to procure the entire episode, I'll break some parts of it down here.
Right away, the show lets you know it's going to be 80's-tastic, with more rainbows and sparkles than you can handle. The main character, Rainbow Brite herself is a high-energy ball of the stuff, which is a departure from the original 80's version but it works. Starlite (The horse) so far works as an egotistical voice of reason and good bumper for Rainbow Brite. The new kid, Bryan, is a kid. From earth. Yea. He helps ground things and explain stuff in a natural way, so having him around is helpful.
We get to meet Stormy and Dark Princess (who is voiced by Molly Ringwald and it's super obvious), who are bad guys. Why? Well so far, it's because they live in a drab castle that rains indoors. But it's likely there's more to it. In fact, the show seems to be gearing up towards a more adventure based show. Rainbow Brite and Stormy both have magic powers
So writing-wise, everything seems alright. It's the visuals that get things messy. Strait-up gonna say it, the animation doesn't look very good. Not very many people work on the show, so what they were able to cobble together is somewhat impressive all things considered. The painted style of some of the backgrounds and props is nice.
Is this new Rainbow Brite worth taking a look at? If you're into all things 80's, it couldn't hurt. But if you're in the market for a show about a high energy girl doing all sorts of magical stuff, you might have better luck holding out for Disney's upcoming Star Vs. The Forces of Evil
While I have
very little experience working with animation, I have come appreciate the
immense amount of time an effort that goes into making the various title
sequences that help films and television shows standout. For instance in
the Bond franchise each film has its own unique opening sequence
style and theme that helps set it apart from its predecessors.
One of my
favorite pieces of animation growing up were the various guide entries of BBC's
1981 adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One
of things that stood out to me in researching these animation sequences was the
fact that they were hand drawn rather than created on the computers of the day.
Today everything is animated via computers.
Today with programs like after effects and maya we are capable of creating entire three dimensional life-like worlds. After seeing Alex Roman's Third and SeventhI was truly astonished to learn that the entire video we watched was one hundred percent animation. This realization both shocked and amazed me for two reasons. One, the fact that this one man was able to accomplish this by himself in the course of one year. Secondly, the thing that slightly scares me about this is the potential that if someone had a large enough team and equipment, they could easily fool the untrained eyes and blur the lines of reality and illusion. While this may sound like something out of a dystopian science fiction story, we're probably not too far off with all the technology currently available.
While this I don't think I have that level of dedication to create the same quality of work as Roman, I am looking forward to working this semester. Seeing the work of Roman as well as some the videos of the previous versions of this class has given me something to shoot for. Although motion graphics and animation are not my primary areas study, I hope to continue dabbling in this field after the semester is over.
For those of you who like to go back and look at past posts on this site, here's a video I found a while ago of an interview with Rod Lord.
This is another example of something really cool that is more than doable using after effects. The only real problem with recreating this is making the 3D elements which would probably need to be done in Maya or Processing. Other than that it's possible for us to shoot the necessary footage and and combine that and 3D graphics in after effects. I really love this 80's neon look that these "lasers" have, It's a fantastic stylistic choice and is very underutilized in most media. It is sort of making a comeback though especially thanks to people like this who are doing some very high quality independent work.
After writing the top part here I did a little more digging and found this. Just in case anyone was curious about how these guys actually did it. I thought this was a very interesting and informative video on how they actually crated the shots, 3D elements, and motion in the video.
