Dragonlance trailer at Youtube at last!

[Piratecat]

A great Lucy Lawless quote, from her site:

"I just did the voice of an animated cartoon for Paramount, called Dragonlance. Obviously it's a fantasy story, with gods and monsters -- (no lesbian subtext). I never felt I nailed animated performance before, so wanted to get a handle on it.

I played a character called "Goldmoon," a Native American. We played around with accents awhile. I didn't know she was Native A till I got there and so didn't have time to research the accent (not many of those where I come from). More staccato! More commanding! More warm! Less disjointed! . . . Ummm, do you just want me to do Xena? Ahh, yes! That's it, do Xena! The voice is perfect! So warm, so commanding, so . . . yeah, yeah, let's get on with it.

It was actually really fun. At last I have done something my friends can actually watch. My son is gratified that I am not playing a bad guy. He can't stand me going to BSG every day to be mean to humans."

 

[Loincloth of Armour]

The best "American" (animation studio is Korean) animated series on TV right now is Avatar The Last Airbender. Nickelodeon spends about $1 million per 20 minute episode according to a recent interview.

[snip]

Either this film was woefully underbudgeted, or their animation studio seriously sucks. Or they spent too much of their budget on voice talent instead of on animation (which is more important).

QF extreme T

One thing people who green-light projects don't seem to realize (no matter how many times it comes back to bite them), is that fantasy and science fantasy-type science fiction must not look cheap.

They're already hoaky in many ways, but fantasy and pulp sf are primarily visual things. It's trying to tap into our imagination. We want to see sword fights, we want to see magic duels between wizards just as much as we want to see starships throwing laser barrages at each other.

If you are not willing to spend the money necessary to make fantasy look good, then don't try. All you will do is embarrass yourself and make the fans more jaded and angry.

Peter Jackson understood this. The people who create Avatar: the Last Airbender understand this. Good storytelling will keep people coming back, but when you're creating a fantasy world for us to visit, it must look good.

I know some people don't like anime-style. No one is saying the movie should have been big eyes, small mouth... but at least Korean and Japanese studios have the experience with motion of characters, colour plattes, integration of backgrounds and other technical expertise to make animated movies look good. The best CGI/animated mix I've seen has been from a Korean movie.

In the end, it appears the holders of the Dragonlance license were faced with 3 choices: 1) produce a movie for a limited budget and use that budget to get 'name' voice actors, 2) risk a larger investment and get better visuals, 3) or not produce a movie at all.

As a genre, fantasy has had far too many people choose the first option.

 

[mearlus]

Man... This depresses me. I had high hopes (foolishly) for this. I know it's a rough cut but still... If the real deal is much better than this, they shouldn't have released this trailer. They should have just made everyone wait longer.

*sigh*

 

[Umbran]

That was thoroughly disappointing.

 

[Zaruthustran]

Piratecat, that Lucy quote is just... awesome.

That trailer? Less awesome. The blend of CGI and cheap, blocky, wooden early-80's animation just doesn't work.

They shouldn't have bothered with "name" voice actors.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Well - I had seen much of this before at Gencon - so it was not a surprise.

The stills posted on the DragonLance movie site promised this level of quality for the past 9 months. People kept saying "those are just production stills".

Yeah well - I know a *lot* about CGI and a reasonable amount about 2D anim. Those stills were looking bad from the get go.

Look - you get what you pay for, more often than not. This was farmed out to an Indain animation company on the cheap and we got an on-the-cheap animated movie.

It may be that it's actually decent when viewed as a whole. And....then again, it probably won't be. I'm a huge DL fan of course, so I'll buy it just the same, either way.

The thing which bothers me the most though is that DragonLance is WotC's #1 potential film property. You would think that if they are going to bother to get something RIGHT, they would have got THIS something right. Better - FAR better to not do it at all then get it wrong.

And who knows - it might still turn out ok - but I have been underwhelmed to date and continue to be. The music, however, appears to be remarkably good for a feature of this quality and budget - so there is some hope for it.

 

[Pyrex]

From what I could tell, the computer animation was also low-quality. Both types of animation didn't seem to blend well.

I actually liked the style of the hand-drawn bits, but the rendered bits were just awful.

 

[Klaus]

Question:

Why isn't Kiefer Sutherland (the biggest name in the cast) mentioned, whereas Lucy Lawless and Michael Rosembaun are? Did he bail out?

 

[The_Warlock]

I...

But...

What the...

BLEAH!

That was terrrrrrrrrible. Not with the standard 10' pole would I touch that.

 

[clone0139]

NOT Dragonlance

Uggh! That's NOT the Dragonlance that you're looking for!

As an actor, would you even what to associate your name with that?!

I gonna need to drink heavily now to get that ugly sight out of my mind lol.