MLP Movie - airing October 6, 2017

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Re: MLP Movie - 2017, Hasbro Allspark, Joe Ballarini Writing

Postby Venusy (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:15 pm

Eurocoin wrote:Oh my, this is going to be a long three years anyway, so people just to keep me sane, please stop using the term CGI, unless you realize that the whole show is already 100% CGI (Flash is a form of a CGI).

Personally I say keep it as Flash. Actually the traditional hand drawn animation would be my preference, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Sorry, I just use CGI as shorthand for 3D CGI, but I know that can be a pet peeve of people.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:17 pm

Maybe DHX doesn't have the facilities to make a feature length production. Keep in mind, they want to go all out on this so they're probably going to get the best animators they can.
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Postby InC (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:28 pm

Sergio Aragones' Mustache wrote:If they were playing it safe, it would have been done at DHX to begin with. But nope, they're going to make this at a different studio altogether.


Are they? I thought they made it sound like this would be a DHX production, and Jayson Thiessen did retweet the movie announcement, but I might have missed something.
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Postby Ruflux (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 7:42 pm

The animation studio has not been mentioned yet, but given Jayson Thiessen's retweet, it's pretty safe to assume it'll be DHX Vancouver, as before. That also suggests that it'll likely be done in Flash. I think the confusion comes from the original press release mentioning Hasbro Studios keeping it in-house and Allspark handling it, but that's just referring to how the TV series is also produced by Hasbro Studios and how that's not changing (unlike the Jem movie). Hasbro doesn't actually own any animation studios, after all. :pinkieshrug:

Another thing that might be causing some confusion is the namedrop of Blumhouse as being co-producers of the Jem movie in the article, but that has nothing to do with the MLP movie, since that's all Hasbro Studios itself, with no outside co-producers or anything.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 9:11 pm

Yes, I was assuming that DHX would be handling the animation again. They were able to do both of the EqG films as well as seasons 3 and 4 of FiM, so perhaps they'll produce this big movie alongside season 5 and the presumed season 6.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 9:53 pm

I thought it was going to be DHX as well but now I'm not sure. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:12 pm

I thought Allspark was Hasbro's in-house animation studio. Is it?
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:18 pm

Huh...I thought it was going to be their new film division? :pinkieshrug:
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Postby InC (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:25 pm

Allspark Pictures is the new label they'll use for their low budget, self-financed or co-financed films as opposed to the G.I Joe and Transformers blockbusters produced by big studios. They wrote that the MLP movie will be produced "in-house" Hasbro Studios, which most likely means continuing their partnership with DHX in this case.

The film will join “Jem and the Holograms” as the first to be produced through Allspark Pictures, a new label through which the company will self-finance or pair up with other companies to co-finance a slate of film projects.

Hasbro Studios will take the reigns of “My Little Pony,” producing and financing it in-house. It is in discussion with studios to release the film “on the broadest possible number of screens,” said Stephen Davis, president of Hasbro Studios and global entertainment and licensing for Hasbro Inc. “We’ve very excited about the potential of that movie.”

“We will continue to make big tentpole movies with our studio partners,” says Davis of franchises like “Transformers” and “G.I. Joe,” at Paramount, and “Monopoly” and “Candy Land” at Sony, “but there is another set of movies where we feel we have an opportunity to have a bit more control over the budgeting, financing, calendarization, marketing and creative of our films. There are new economic models that fit certain films.”
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:31 pm

Ah, I get it now. Wonder what this means for the movie's budget in that case. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:10 pm

Calculon wrote:Ah, I get it now. Wonder what this means for the movie's budget in that case. :pinkieshrug:

I certainly doubt that it'll be a B-movie or anything. It'll probably get a theatrical release on the same scale as the second or third Pokemon movies.
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:12 pm

Calculon wrote:Ah, I get it now. Wonder what this means for the movie's budget in that case. :pinkieshrug:



Well we know it won't be over 100 million or anything, my guess is it'll stilk be pretty big though, maybe 25-50 million? :pinkieshrug:
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:12 pm

Yeah, you're probably right there. I imagine it'll be pretty huge in terms of marketing as well.
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Postby Wylie (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:22 pm

Sergio Aragones' Mustache wrote:If they were playing it safe, it would have been done at DHX to begin with. But nope, they're going to make this at a different studio altogether.


Really? How do we know this?
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:29 pm

Foaming Mouth Guy wrote:
Really? How do we know this?

Never mind. I was given the impression that Allspark was going to be the animation studio. Apparently not :-I
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Postby InC (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:39 pm

Hasbro is financing it themselves so I doubt it will cost more than a few millions, but Flash is so cheap that it's all DHX would need to make the movie look great. A season of pony costs about $5-6M for nearly 10 hours of content, so even only $3M would still be three times the show's budget per minute. I think that's what they meant by "technology bringing costs down" because while Flash is old news, DHX did innovate a whole lot to make it look as good as it does and none of the existing Flash movies come even close to the animation of EqG2. There was some cool cinematography in there and some good animation despite the human models being inherently stiffer than ponies, so I'm very optimistic for the movie.

The film can be low-budget but still look good and get a decent release - not Pixar big, but not a B-movie either. That's also for the best, really - even Daniel Ingram seems to be involved, so we're getting a true FiM movie made by the same crew with no meddling from, well, another big company than the one we're already used to.
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Postby The Doctor (?) » Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:41 pm

:awesomedash: What if they got a studio to do it in traditional 2D animation?
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 12:03 am

Major Glory wrote::awesomedash: What if they got a studio to do it in traditional 2D animation?

I really don't think this'll happen. That'd jack the budget up a ton and shove FiM into a new style that wouldn't necessarily be good.
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 12:19 am

Unless the animation is done in Korea. That can keep the budget down significantly.
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Postby Wylie (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 3:10 am

I really don't think they'll deviate from the animation style that's brought them this far, especially since they're talking about how they can save money vs. traditional animation by doing it their way.
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 4:47 am

For what its worth, "The Powerpuff Girls" movie had a budget estimated to be $10 million, which is actually pretty low for an animated feature. If the MLP movie is in that range, they can still do it traditionally animated.

(I'm actually not a fan of the animation in FiM, so I hope the movie improves it)
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Postby DerFurShur (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 5:43 am

Assuming DHX gets it (and I don't really see why they wouldn't) they did a pretty good job with Rainbow Rocks. So with almost three years, an even bigger budget, and doing it with the pony models they've had 4 years to work with already I really don't see a need to change the animation so much as just improve it.
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Postby Homeswirl (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 6:09 am

Given this quote, I can't imagine it being any other animation form than what we've seen so far:

“We have a lot of experience working on this particular brand,” and when it comes to producing the animation, technology has brought down costs to a level where it doesn’t need to spend $100 million or more to make the film.


Regardless of the tools, the more effort you put into something, the better it looks. If the dollars per minute ratio is much higher than the episodes & EqG movies so far, and that funding goes into animators making this look amazing, it will look amazing.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 7:13 am

Yeah, with such a long time to work on it, the animation should look top quality.
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Postby Rarietty (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 8:27 pm

Doesn't Hasbro already outsource a large portion of MLP's production to Top Draw? According to Top Draw's Website, they did it as recently as season 4 in 2013, and animated all but 4 of the 26 episodes and did layouts and backgrounds for all of the episodes. MLP is a huge joint effort beyond DHX.

Altogether, you have both of the production teams at DHX and Top Draw, plus the new people at Allspark and the higher ups at Hasbro. That's a lot of potential people co-ordinating on this, and it only makes financial sense to utilize talented workers that are already hired rather than wasting them and looking somewhere else.

I'd still really like to see a hand-drawn pony flick though (heck, traditionally animated, big-budget American movie in the 2010s period). However, that's beyond me. Now Disney, on the other hand... :spoiler:
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 9:08 pm

Huh. I wonder which of the four S4 episodes were NOT animated at Top Draw. The two cliffhangers?
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 9:16 pm

Most likely, due to the high amount of special effects those episodes had.
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Postby Bumble-B (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 9:31 pm

Lady Rainicorn wrote:I'd still really like to see a hand-drawn pony flick though (heck, traditionally animated, big-budget American movie in the 2010s period). However, that's beyond me. Now Disney, on the other hand... :spoiler:


Well, we probably won't see a traditionally animated film, let alone Disney film in quite some time. In fact, they just announced a new Disney princess movie, Moana for 2016, and that's another 3D animated film.

Now about that Paperman technology though :smirk: ...
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I think I heard that they're not 'ready' with the technology (2D/3D Hybrid) yet but i'm hoping we see that technology at work in 2017 or onwards. Sadly, I think this tech might also mean that fully hand drawn films are unlikelier to occur unless Warner Bros or another studio decides to either adopt the Paperman tech (if they even can) OR they get back to going fully hand drawn.

Though, if something like that would come in 2017... looks like things might get interesting with Ponies.

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Postby Doctor Zoidberg, Homeowner (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 10:29 pm

A little OT, but I think that Paperman tech will make for an amazing film sometime in the next ten years. I don't think it's too far fetched to think that it won't be long before computer animation rivals the best hand-drawn for expressiveness in acting and motion. It's really close in the best films already.

Just look at how good the animation in pony can be at its best, and that's cruddy old Flash, of all things.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Wed Oct 29, 2014 10:41 pm

Yeah, I really think that's going to be the wave of the future with animaton. It has such a nice and pleasing style. :allears:
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Thu Oct 30, 2014 1:30 am

Sadly, the only hand-drawn animation done in the US are small-time independent producers like Bill Plympton, who doesn't have much mainstream attention.

It's popular overseas, though, especially Japan and Europe.
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Postby Stuff (?) » Thu Oct 30, 2014 9:48 pm

Also this pretty much means that this forum will still be around by 2017. :v:
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Thu Oct 30, 2014 9:58 pm

Hey, at least we'll all still have fun with each other for a long time then! :hug:
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Postby Dead Leaf (?) » Sat Nov 01, 2014 4:13 am

I'm excited for the movie and what it could mean for the future of the franchise. Is it the end or just the beginning of something new? They might just move from an episode format to a movie series. Where they release one a year. It would keep the fans interested without making the show feel stale.

I looked at some of Joe's earlier work. Namely the only thing I could find that he worked on, Dance of the Dead. He did a pretty decent job. He knows how to wright stereotypical characters in their proper roles. FiM has such well defined characters it should be easy for him to handle.

Just wish we knew more about it.
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Postby ROBOT B9 (?) » Sat Nov 01, 2014 7:38 am

Hey there, welcome to the forums! :party:

As for your theory, I think it'd be a little harder to release yearly movies than it is to make a season. It's a good idea but we also have to take into account the idea of diminishing box office returns.
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Postby Dexanth (?) » Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:21 am

Top Draw, IIRC, is basically DHX's 'They do all the time consuming stuff' studio. So they're contributing, but contributing in the sense of like 'Now animate all the in-between stuff for us'.

Which I don't really know how much input that gives them on the creative process. My guess is little to none. :pinkieshrug:
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Postby SoundMonkey44 (?) » Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:38 am

If the off chance the movie were traditional hand drawn animation, something simmilar to KanashiPanda's Stuff would be nice IMO.



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Postby PaulloDEC (?) » Sun Nov 02, 2014 2:28 am

To throw in my two cents on the animation question, I'd be genuinely stunned if it's anything other than show-style Flash (albeit a more detailed, polished version). The whole brand is currently associated with that look; clothing, toys, books, DVDs, nine times out of ten there's a show vector on the product or the packaging.

Even putting that aside, they've got an extremely efficient and cost-effective pipeline for that kind of animation now, and I can't see them breaking away from that too easily. If I were Hasbro, I'd be keeping the budget very modest and shooting for the upper end of the Flash spectrum rather than the lower end of the traditional or 3D CG spectrums. Hasbro seem kinda new to producing films under their own steam (rather than just licensing IP), so I'm not sure they'd want to be taking any huge risks this early on.
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Postby Mr. Big (?) » Sun Nov 02, 2014 2:38 am

I think people are over-estimating how back-breaking and expensive traditional animation is. By all accounts it's cheaper than CGI, and if anything, even easier to do than Flash. Not quicker perse, but easier to handle than Flash puppetry.

I can vouch on this aspect. And it can't hurt to have the movie's animation be more polished than the show's limited animation look.
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Postby Fizzbuzz (?) » Sun Nov 02, 2014 2:45 am

Like I said, though, would traditional animation really be better? FiM's look has pretty much been defined by its Flash animation. There's no reason the movie can't be animated in Flash and still be polished; hell, they could animate the whole thing on the ones if they wanted to.
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