Report by Shannon Muir written August 18th, 1998
A panel at ComiCon International: San Diego on August 16th brought together representatives from Mike Young Productions and Netter Digital Entertainment to unveil promos and clips from the new series and answer fan questions.
On the panel was Head Writer Marc Handler, animators Don Neudecker and Josh Pirkryl, and producers Mike Young and Bill Schultz. And my apologies for initially forgetting animator Robert Powers, who was a last-minute panel addition. He's a Netter Digital animator but you'd know him best for animating the dancing baby on ALLY MCBEAL. He pitched in to help Josh answer some of the animation questions.
The presentation opened with that awesome Sprite commercial running on BET (Black Entertainment Television) that everyone's been e-mailing me about but I've never seen! Bill Schultz said something to the effect that when something like this happens, you know a character has reached icon status. I hope that's a sign that King Zarkon won't stay good, or the "playa hating" image doesn't work well.
After introducing the panelists, they ran a 2-minute promo for the series which I believe had been created for the international sales convention called MIPCOM, where countries from around the world gather to buy TV product from other countries. Most of the narration for the promo, with visuals of VOLTRON battle sequences, is an introduction similar to the current one, with a few minor alterations as "Voltron is needed once again..." I believe the wording was. The second half of the ad pitched when the shows were scheduled to begin airing.
After this, Marc Handler spoke about the difficulties of bringing VOLTRON back to the screen after so many years, and deciding which characters to go with. They're open to adding more in the future, but wanted to start with the essentials. The only new characters so far are Amalgamus (as previously announced), but also two space pirates named Queequeg and Lafitte who will be Lotor's new henchpeople. Queequeg is voiced by CLANCY BROWN, and Lafitte marks the return of TRESS MACNEILLE, who played Merla in NEW ADVENTURES OF VOLTRON. Correction: BILLY WEST is the voice of Queequeg; Clancy Brown was Maximus in the first episode and I hear will reappear later as a character called Igor, thanks to a highly reliable source! Sorry for the error.
To give people a comparison point who may not have seen the old series, a clip was run from the "Mousemania" episode of NEW ADVENTURES OF VOLTRON where Voltron has to rescue Cheddar, a captured Space Mouse. After having seen the 3-D footage, seeing the old 2-D soon after really was a shock... but I think you'll enjoy the new show. As even Mike Young pointed out, VOLTRON clearly has to go 3-D to compete when all the newer shows of the genre are all 3-D as well.
Then Don Neudecker and Josh Pirkryl from Netter Digital talked about doing the actual animation. Josh walked the audience (with the help of visual aids) how character movement is animated. Due to the series time constraints, humans are done using a motion capture system, though a lot of the other 3-D animation is done "by hand," if you will. Josh showed video in four stages:
STAGE 1 - THE ANIMATIC: An animatic, used by many TV shows these days as part of the animation process, is scanned video images of the storyboards edited to match to the appropriate dialogue and assembled onto videotape.
STAGE 2 - MOTION CAPTURE: An actor and actress (portraying the space pirates, but NOT the voice actors) wear black suits with about 26 marked points I think. These points match up with knees, elbows, and other distinctive points of the human figure. The animatic is played and the actor moves in time to the animatic, the same way the animated character needs to move.
STAGE 3 - WIREFRAME: From the data gathered by the movement of the actor's body (the computer tracks the marked points and shows a wire "stick figure" going through the motions.
STAGE 4 - FINAL FOOTAGE: The computer builds the appropriate character likeness on the wireframe (which can take a while), and with the digital background added, the scene is complete.
Don revealed himself to be the "demoltions expert" as he discussed the challenge of doing the battle sequences. The sequences will become far more complex as the series goes along, you have to remember that even though the longtime fans are very familiar with the VOLTRON universe, the animators have had to learn and do everything from scratch! I for one admire their hard work.
Apparently the animators are fighting over who gets to design the robeasts; at least this is what Don and Josh suggsted in what appeared to be half-jest.
Then came the real treat: Mike Young and Netter Digital took the great risk of showing the audience Act 1 of the first episode, without music and effects. All we saw was the visuals and dialogue. Being a fan myself, I'll be kind and leave that information on a special spoiler page in case you don't want to know just yet...
Then came the fan questions. Some were asked about the toy line. The toy company Trendmasters is a partner in this venture as well, and soon should be releasing a new set of action figures for the series. According to Mike Young, the movie and "other media" (such as comic books) are still being discussed. Some people have sent information to me personally about articles mentioning the movie, but I haven't seen any of those and can't comment.
It was also mentioned that Lion Keys and other needed weapons will materalize out of the new uniforms when required, I suspect this has to do with saving time in animating the characters. If you had to render the keys, guns, etc every time but not use them it takes much more time. I don't do computer animation myself, but know people who do. It's challenging work!
There was a great push at the panel to bring back Sven, and not a lot of support for the mice. No one spoke up when someone asked about the return of Merla or Stride the Tiger Fighter. Between what I learned at the Con and from the e-mail I've received from many of you, there is a good segment of people who have NOT seen NEW ADVENTURES OF VOLTRON in either airing (1986 or now with the new title), and therefore had no idea who was being talked about! I hope that the 3-D angle will convince more stations to air the new show.
Toward the end, Marc Handler stressed to the fans how important the fan support was to the show coming back and pointed out "I know superfan Shannon Muir is in the audience," which I certaintly didn't expect. I've been in contact with Marc off and on for years, but to have him mention me specifically to the people there was very flattering. Luckily I didn't have to stand up and take a bow or anything. That usually embarasses me.
Which reminds me, from the show of hands when they asked about who had heard about the show from the Internet, the amount of hands raised was very few. There just may not have been a lot of Internet-savvy people at the Con, I don't know. In fact, I overheard many people say seeing the panel in the Con guide was the first they'd heard of anything...
So there's the buzz from San Diego, as best I can tell it right now. I'm still kind of worn out. If I think of anything, I'll add it and probably make it a different color so it stands out...