Posted by Peter Ceresole on October 04, 2007 at 17:53:26 from 80.176.146.133 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: New Swallows and Amazons Cartoons With Action Toys!!?? posted by Eric Abraham on October 04, 2007 at 12:40:38:
I could almost see Mr. Ransome's drawings becoming animated - just the simple line drawings coming into action - all black and white with accents of color with a narrator to fill in the background. It could be done, but not in the general line of contemporary Saturday morning TV cartoons.
That would be lovely. However I think it might be terribly expensive to do. Unless you felt you could successfully revive Jackanory, to gather a following nowadays it would have to be properly animated. My TV production experience was nothing to do with cartoons, but I believe that there is a reason for the generic, slick 'Pacific animation' look. Simple, pure line drawings would be relatively easy to animate using specialist software, that 'tweens' between successive stills. However, the more lines there are in the drawing, and the greater the hesitancy in the strokes, the more computational grunt you have the throw at it. And you'd have to draw a whole lot of 'original Ransomes'... A whole new lot of Hollywoods in fact... I'm not saying it couldn't be done- it certainly could- but it would be at a cost that would need justifying. And I'm not sure that the likely audience for any AR story beyond 'Swallows and Amazons' could furnish that justification.
But people don't make programmes just to make money, or at least not all of them do, and it might well be a feasible project.