Re: How Pony is Formed: Production and Business Thread




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ROBOT B9
Round and round and round she goes, where she'll stop, nobody knows - Joined: Mar 27, 2012
- Location: Albir, Spain
- Gender: Male
Moderators: Perrydotto, Dexanth, Venusy, Wayoshi
ROBOT B9 wrote:Seriously, if I was there at Comic Con, I'd personally ask them what the hell they were thinking. Just...stupid!
Illuminations wrote:They were either going to have to air Season 5 in April like they actually did, or as an alternative, prolong the release of Season 5 until September at the latest.....if and only if they wanted to avoid the summer television drought. That is a lose-lose situation for them.
ShieldedDiamond wrote:It really was. I kind of want to know what forced them to do it this late, because putting themselves in such a situation doesn't seem like a choice.
ShieldedDiamond wrote:Stupid? They're getting low ratings because everyone's away, it's better to start it later again. They probably realized they made a mistake airing the season too late/too soon. (Too late after the last one, yet too soon for 'TV season').
Fizzbuzz wrote:Assuming Hasbro wants to start generation 5 of MLP after the 2017 movie, I imagine that at least a fair number of FiM's crew will go to work on that show as well. Or he could work on something else that DHX is making at that time.
Fizzbuzz wrote:I imagine that G5 will either keep all the characters or none of them. That is to say, I do not expect we'll see something like G3 Rainbow Dash vs. G4 Rainbow Dash, where they're almost completely different except for their name and basic color scheme. To that end, my money's on a whole new cast of characters, as there's only so many stories that you can tell with any given cast. Keeping the same world seems quite doable, though, especially considering the amount of lore that's been developed for Equestria.
What I'm really curious about is how the art style will change. I can't really imagine G5's style will go back to the (relatively) more horselike designs of G3 and before, but it'll still need to look visually distinct from this generation and still look enough like a pony to justify the "My Little Pony" name.
Fizzbuzz wrote:I imagine that G5 will either keep all the characters or none of them. That is to say, I do not expect we'll see something like G3 Rainbow Dash vs. G4 Rainbow Dash, where they're almost completely different except for their name and basic color scheme. To that end, my money's on a whole new cast of characters, as there's only so many stories that you can tell with any given cast. Keeping the same world seems quite doable, though, especially considering the amount of lore that's been developed for Equestria.
What I'm really curious about is how the art style will change. I can't really imagine G5's style will go back to the (relatively) more horselike designs of G3 and before, but it'll still need to look visually distinct from this generation and still look enough like a pony to justify the "My Little Pony" name.
Headless Horse wrote:
I kinda think it might.
FiM's visual style, as much fun as it is, is extremely idiosyncratic and doesn't really lend itself to the kind of easy translation to physical toys that the more designed-by-committee styles of G1/Tales/G3 did. They hired Lauren Faust to bring in a highly personal vision, and she did—but as much as it was to the benefit of the cartoon, it was to the detriment of the toys. Translating her style to toys that convey the same sense of fun as the animated characters they're based on works only marginally better than, say, Homestar Runner. (In fact I bust up laughing every time I see H*R figurines with their impossible 3D shapes, like they're saying "fuck you" to the time-space continuum.) G4 pony toys look like Disney goldfish with horse bodies attached. They simply don't read as "horses", nor do I imagine they tickle the horse obsession nerve that little girls are reputed to have.
ROBOT B9 wrote:I think Hasbro would stay away from CGI...really, when you think about it, CGI really didn't take off for cartoons on TV as people hoped.
Fizzbuzz wrote:Does that supposed horse obsession really even matter, though? Consider how the EqG toys apparently seem to be selling incredibly well despite their fairly mediocre quality and originality (vs. Monster High and Ever After High). It seems like they're selling primarily based on the strength of the original FiM characters, so I think that shows to Hasbro that making characters that kids care about is what's most important, not whether they happen to look like horses.
Headless Horse wrote:
That's the question, isn't it? Has FiM changed Hasbro's mind from "we must make horse toys, they will sell to girls" to "we must sell a storytelling property with strong characters and good merchandisability, oh btw they're horses fyi"?
Because that would pretty much be a sea change in their business model.
Orange Fluffy Sheep wrote:i am not ready for the transhumanist revolution to begin with my butt
Fizzbuzz wrote:
Fizzbuzz wrote:Well, later on I remembered what I was saying in this thread about how G5's style might look, and I think a design like the one at the bottom of this page would work pretty well. I get that feeling since I think it's possible that Hasbro might want G5 ponies to normally wear clothes, so as to have more merchandise options for toys, so making them look slightly more anthro like that would give them a reason to be dressed while still keeping them reminiscent enough of a pony to justify the My Little Pony name. It could make the characters more appealing and endearing in the show, too, since if they stand upright then that gives them more room for bodily expressions.
Headless Horse wrote:(They've actually been around a hell of a lot longer than that)
Orange Fluffy Sheep wrote:i am not ready for the transhumanist revolution to begin with my butt
Marimo wrote:Though I suspect the use of CGI was at least partially to make it look closer to the movies.
ROBOT B9 wrote:Transformers was their first major success in that field, right?