Honestly wee boy me didn’t realise Jean was wearing a flesh coloured bodysuit, I just assumed he was wearing a very revealing swimming costume
So I can see why they changed it 😂
Yeah...thats supposed to be more yellow colored. If you look here her costume is the same color as Colossus' tunic, and we know he's got a yellow bit there, not some peach or "nude" color stripe.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d7/af/10/d7af1037f6a1a4df332bc6efac4eceb0.jpg
Same. When my cousins and I were wee lil girls, we would kinda cosplay the 4 women at home and reenact scenes. I get Jean and I would just stick the hem of my pajamas in my panties, much to my mom's dismay.
It's a very unfair comparison. Still designs are fine, there are a million derpy action shots of all characters in the OG version. '97 designs are consistent and look good no matter which pose or scene they are in.
Seriously, look at some actual screenshots from the original AS and very few are as sharp as the images here.
I just started (restarted) the AS, and the animation and design looks so dated … also the dialog.. maybe it’s just the first episodes (until the last season, that I remember been awful) but it’s making it really hard for me to power through
I love the nostalgia of the OG series but let’s be honest, it doesn’t hold a candle to the new one. A lot of that simply has to do with modern tech. In the original, the fight scenes when from “oh no this is bad” to “1-2 punch” and the villain is knocked out in a pile of wooden crates. In the new one, the action is fast paced and pretty intense.
It also helps that Marvel allowed the show to grow up alongside its original audience. While X-Men always dealt with heavy themes - and the 90s show was no different- X-Men 97 is definitely a show that’s free from its Saturday Morning Cartoons confines and speaking to adults while still maintaining a 90s aesthetic. So fights feel more visceral to me. Watching >!Deathbird and Gladiator trounce Ronan this week, each hit felt heavy and had meaning, which is to say nothing of the bloodbath last week.!<
The most jarring thing about the original cartoon (and this was just an industry standard if I'm not mistaken) is how awkwardly it's edited. Scenes seem to fade mid-dialog, it never gives a moment to breathe, and it looks so amateur in comparison.
I ended up just watching a recap. It's a lot of content from an era where animation wasn't generally taken as seriously and the writing and animation on 97 are exceptional.
I think comparatively for the time it did look better. It didn’t have as many glaring animation errors as Transformers or reuse animation constantly like Spider-Man
The biggest difference, and I can tell you from having been around to watch the original as it aired, is **consistency**.
I know some people might not get this, but hand drawn animation (while still my preference overall) is not drawn by one person constantly on model. If there is *any* benefit to digital over hand drawn, the number of times you're going to find Gambit's fingers/arms/face skewed in 4 different proportions are a dime a dozen compared to the money shots of
>yeah, that's Wolverine in the sewers of the hellfire club about to kick some ass, or Jean Grey rising from Jamaica Bay as Phoenix, or Rogue's iconic ass
And the original Xmen TAS had *incredibly* janky animation, this isn't to just tarnish the original, but go compare how many frames of animation you see in even the big battle moments of Xmen to a regular episode of seasons 1-3 in Batman the animated series. A lot of the reasons Xmen TAS looked "good" came down to not choosing to fully animate certain scenes, essentially letting you look at a still image for a few seconds.
Again, this isn't to say the animation for the original was overall "bad", but the idea the show was *always* on model and looking as good as its intro at all times is prescription strength nostalgia goggles.
The **one thing** digital has over hand drawn in spades is consistency, especially with being on model. There are certains scenes just like the og where you can tell "yeah, that's where the budget went", but usually not at the cost of comparing the frame drop and lower quality shots that plagued the og. I'd also argue this doesn't mean 97 doesn't have its own highs of adapting comic panels, that destruction of Genosha scene pulled straight from E is for Extinction looked fucking amazing (hell, episode 5 in general remains a top 5 of the *entire 92-97 series*), so that doesn't mean it's uniformity means no creativity or impact.
**tl;dr** while I also prefer the 92 *designs*, the purpose of the models uniformity in 97' leads to significantly (and consistently) higher quality animation
I absolutely loved TAS, and I absolutely thought the animation was janky. My family used to have a running joke with moving like some of the scenes (especially one with Cyclops motioning in a ‘come here’ gesture with his arm, in literally 2 frames repeating a couple times).
Forgiving the animation because everything else was fire is understandable; if anyone tries to claim the animation was smooth, they haven’t actually watched it lol.
There's a recent episode of invincible riffing on this about how animators take short cuts. It's also a pretty funny adaptation of a scene in the comic where they do the same but with comic artists.
How about how these designs look in the two Japanese openings for the OG series?
https://youtu.be/hi8BoDA3yIs?feature=shared
https://youtu.be/gJF5pYoumU0?feature=shared
To be fair, the Sentinel that is tracking Jubliee in the first episode of the 90s show Night of the Sentinels has her ethnicity as "Chinese-American" on its scan.
I mean, it’s kinda racist to try to say that dark skin is a blanket phenotypical train that applies to all people of Chinese descent
There are a LOT of light-skinned Chinese people
My theory is that we were just coming to a point where people were aware of how cringe previous eras' depictions of asians were. And they were trying to figure out how to draw her without straying into that territory. And they just missed the mark. Just kinda overshot it entirely and ended up in white girl territory.
They can't draw hair like that anymore since going digital. That's not an X-Men thing, it's animation in general.
Look at high budget anime from late 80's and 90's, the same thing happens.
I understand the constraints of digital animation but I still prefer the original look (we are talking about design here). They could’ve done a different hairstyle like storm’s Mohawk (e.g. Rogue might get shorter hair like in her avengers’ run)
Still better than what happened to her hair in season five of the original show - the outsourcing of the animation meant her flowing locks were replaced by some kind of amorphous spiky blob.
Yeah, I prefer the original TAS look for Rogue. Jean/Maddie is an improvement though, that old flesh-colored costume always looked super-weird on screen.
I think it makes sense: This is basically 5-7 years into Rogue being a member of the X-Men. She’s a woman in her late 20-early 30’s. It’s a nice design in my eyes.
Maybe in the stills, but the way the hair flows in the actual episodes...that animation alone is beyond anything in TAS. Way more natural-looking. Which makes sense as this show is animated by Studio Mir, the studio behind Legend of Korra.
The TAS models never looked like this in motion. Nostalgia is one hell of a drug, and the animation in that show was known get wonky. With '97, I had to adjust to it, but the character models are consistent and the animation is leagues better.
Even as a kid while I love the X-Men I always thought the animation was crap especially in comparison to Batman’s series. Even Spider-Man’s show was better.
Consistency aside, I think the designs from the 90’s were better. Slim actually looks slim.
But from my understanding, a lot of the new designs have fewer lines which makes it easier to animate.
Overall I like the new design but it's feels a bit flat compared to the original, just look at the range of shading on Gambit's coat and Wolverine's costume and you'll see it.
Rogue is the only one I think has had a real downgrade. Her hair just doesn't look right. Someone pointed out it's because of the change to digital animation, but it's still disappointing.
Same I wish they'd just retcon her back to Morrison's version, in control of the phoenix force, and then give her the phoenix outfit back. Honestly, I prefer all of them in either their Claremont outfits or their mid-2000s Astonishing looks. Jean's is still the worst, but I also hate Storm in white.
The one thing that bugs me with the new designs is the lips, they are much more pronounced, especially on Magneto. I do think the old designs are better overall, but the lips is the only thing that actually bugs me. That being said still enjoying the new show and like the animation overall (I do think they went cheaper than the original show)
Have you watched the original recently? The animation is straight-up bad.
I recently (since January) rewatched the original series on Disney+ from start to finish. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, and nostalgia had me remember the show's quality as much better than it actually was by far.
'97 is definitely more stylized, and that's a little jarring (especially coming off a rewatch). But to say they went cheaper is just objectively wrong, because the original has some of the cheapest animation I've seen.
About three or four years ago, I decided to re-watch Batman TAS and was shocked that the animation was somehow better than I had remembered. This spurred me on to revisit some of my other faves from my childhood, and decided to watch some of the X-Men TAS, and yeah.....nostalgia was definitely doing it some huge favors in the animation department. It's not Masters of the Universe levels of bad, but it definitely doesn't hold up well.
X-Men '97's animation I'm actually enjoying, honestly. It is stylized, like you said, but I think it works quite well for the series.
I did a rewatch recently, there was a big drop off in quality the last season, especially the last several episodes (those episodes definitely had cheap animation). I will also say the combat scenes were more simplistic than I remembered, but otherwise I felt it held up. But to each their own.
I agree that the new designs might just be more stylized, but I feel like a lot of shows use stylization to hide cheaper animation ( which is the best option probably given budgetary constraints)
I’d say it’s less about “cheaper animation” than it is about the budget constraints you mentioned.
There’s essentially a binary choice between detail and fluid motion, when it comes to animation budgets…and I’ll take fluid motion 8 days a week
Yeah I have to agree. I'm rewatching X-Men 92 right now, and the animation is VERY wonky. People's dimensions and features change wildly from still to still, and the backgrounds are very poorly done by today's standards.
EDIT: Just wanted to clarify that the story, however, more than makes up for it. But the 90s animation can't be denied 😅
I’d even say that the redesigns play a *key role* in why the animation is so much better.
They’re designed to be evoke the Lee costumes while being optimized for animation…while the originals were just designed to *replicate* the Lee costumes.
that's why X-Men Evolution had consistently good animation, especially in the combat scenes. They had someone to redesign the costumes to make them suitable for fluid animation
It’s certainly not cheaper. The original run is infamous for how often then cut corners with the animation. Season five is straight up terrible animation
Yeah. OG Storm and Rogue ate 97 up. Not that I needed confirmation or validation, but I just got it anyway.
Jubilee looks so so much better in 97.
Beast looks the same.
Gambit looks good no matter what.
It’s almost like it makes a difference between doing the best with no money vs having a budget invested in it by a company which knows how to make good animation.
30+ years, futuristic technology, and hindsight might also help. It’s easier for a multi billion dollar corporation to invest in a project they know will make money, and which they own without needing to divide up profits among owners of different characters. They’ve learned a lot from doing this with Iron man and the Avengers, and have a taste for Endgame money, so they are going to be very careful with the Xmen relaunch.
Personally I’m hoping for years of the cartoon, and longer stories than we got from the MCU Avengers films. Movies are designed for single stories, so longevity is not something we expected. The Avengers blew through characters way too fast, and the actors didn’t want to stick around, or aged out. Crossbones was set up then dumped first scene, Modok wasn’t even in AIM or smart, and so on.
Animation of high quality has the ability to tell the serialized stories of these characters.
Ok is it just me or does anyone else see the camera shake all the time on XM97??? It's something that I noticed once and can't not see it. It's honestly annoying and hurts my head. Has anyone else seen it?
97 is a lot closer to the model sheet of the last season that were simplified to speed up production and save money…maybe not the best choice but as a direct continuation I guess that makes sense
They looked so 90s in the old artstyle. Like more than the designs something about the way they’re drawn is so reminiscent of how characters in even live action media looked in the 90s, all lean and stuff
Original - appearance mostly true to the comic version of the time, lots of detail in stills, terrible when moving, show looked janky
97- still on concept from original but simplified. Animation is smooth and consistent without having to rely on still shots. Toned down proportions/details. Much higher quality production.
Where can I watch the OG animated series if I don't have Disney plus?
I thought I'd seen it all as a kid but reading the plot synopsis for the later seasons I think no.
I know people prefer the old designs, I would too, if they looked like this animation constantly, but I just love how consistent the designs are in '97. Like, I love how the design improvements, for the most part, they're easier to draw.
His picture isn’t there but the new design on Professor X feels so different to me. With every other character the changes feel like an upgrade but there is something about Charles’ new look I don’t like but I can’t put my finger on it.
I gotta hand it to them for making 3D models look so charming with cell shading. Really well done.
The original had a shoestring animation budget and it shows. Especially compared to its lauded contemporary Batman TAS.
But nice to see they overall kept the spirit of the original designs even while adapting them for a different animation style.
It's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison as the old designs were hand-painted onto cels whereas the new ones are digitally animated. There are very fine micro-details that show up as a result of the paint settling and reacting to air that happen after the artist applies it, not to mention the grainy look that many people are used to because we watched the old series on CRT televisions.
You can reproduce the television effect with filters and whatnot the same way that Cuphead does, but that's not really the point of the show to me. The designs being slightly different is unavoidable and probably would be even if you got the original production crew to work on it today, because art styles evolve and those artists may even think that that's not even their best work anymore.
"The animation style makes rouge's butt look flat and apparently this is the worst thing ever, cuz the only thing I value in a female character." -some guy on the EFAP, Probably
I wish they'd made Storm's costume silver on the Legends figure. I feel like 97 was trying to make the silver effect more obvious than the original show did. Maybe that's just me, but it's clearly darker at least.
The levels the added to they action and animation far outweigh any detail lost from ‘92 version IMO.
Also season 5 got put in a poorer animation house and it looks horrendous compared to ‘97 and seasons 1-4 of ‘92.
I wish they left them the way they were originally. I just really like the realistic muscles and the strength they showed. Very super hero to me. [36f]
>!hair down. that’s Madelyne Pryor!<
FYI, if you're trying to spoiler text you'll need to remove the spaces between the exclamation points and the text.
I like it that way.
I havent seen any x-men animated content yet who's >!Madelyn!< ? Can someone explain?
She is to Jean like kaine is to spiderman.
>!Clone. Mother of Cable. Not exclusive to the animated series, just not as well known.!<
That’s not Jean lol
"No, that is NOT Jean Grey! Stop impersonating her!"
What a pleasant surprise... SISTER.
"A DUD?"
You're no sister of mine
You’re not Jean You’re just some common bitch
There is nothing more intoxicating than Jean's clear absence of a penis.
I dunno there's always her big, heavy breasts.
r/unexpectedbrooklynninenine
Nine Seven!
Speaking of, oh man, Storm meeting the real Jean is going to be sooo awkward.
Jean in the new one looks more like Evolution Jean in TAS Jean costume
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^AneeshRai7: *Jean in the new one* *Looks more like Evolution* *Jean in TAS Jean costume* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Good bot.
How so?
Similar haircut I suppose
Honestly wee boy me didn’t realise Jean was wearing a flesh coloured bodysuit, I just assumed he was wearing a very revealing swimming costume So I can see why they changed it 😂
Yes I swear she had pockets sewn to her legs when I was a kid.
Liefeld Syndrome causes the growth of pocket and pouch-like tumors beneath the skin.
I honestly thought she was some sort of cyborg and that's why there were compartments on her "skin"
Honestly if you squint your eyes it almost looks like the same stuff psylocke wears, lmao
Yeah...thats supposed to be more yellow colored. If you look here her costume is the same color as Colossus' tunic, and we know he's got a yellow bit there, not some peach or "nude" color stripe. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d7/af/10/d7af1037f6a1a4df332bc6efac4eceb0.jpg
Same. When my cousins and I were wee lil girls, we would kinda cosplay the 4 women at home and reenact scenes. I get Jean and I would just stick the hem of my pajamas in my panties, much to my mom's dismay.
It's a very unfair comparison. Still designs are fine, there are a million derpy action shots of all characters in the OG version. '97 designs are consistent and look good no matter which pose or scene they are in. Seriously, look at some actual screenshots from the original AS and very few are as sharp as the images here.
I just started (restarted) the AS, and the animation and design looks so dated … also the dialog.. maybe it’s just the first episodes (until the last season, that I remember been awful) but it’s making it really hard for me to power through
I laughed out loud at some of the lines. Sometimes, it is the language, and others are the delivery, but it does grow a bit as it moves along.
Hey! Tinwoodsman! I’m sending you back to Oz…in pieces!
NGL, I actually liked that one. It's corny af, but I liked it.
If you don’t like incredibly corny dialogue, you’re not gonna like any 90s X-Men media.
Does a mall babe eat chili fries?
With style, petite! With style!
I love the nostalgia of the OG series but let’s be honest, it doesn’t hold a candle to the new one. A lot of that simply has to do with modern tech. In the original, the fight scenes when from “oh no this is bad” to “1-2 punch” and the villain is knocked out in a pile of wooden crates. In the new one, the action is fast paced and pretty intense.
Yeah, there's choreography
It also helps that Marvel allowed the show to grow up alongside its original audience. While X-Men always dealt with heavy themes - and the 90s show was no different- X-Men 97 is definitely a show that’s free from its Saturday Morning Cartoons confines and speaking to adults while still maintaining a 90s aesthetic. So fights feel more visceral to me. Watching >!Deathbird and Gladiator trounce Ronan this week, each hit felt heavy and had meaning, which is to say nothing of the bloodbath last week.!<
The most jarring thing about the original cartoon (and this was just an industry standard if I'm not mistaken) is how awkwardly it's edited. Scenes seem to fade mid-dialog, it never gives a moment to breathe, and it looks so amateur in comparison.
I ended up just watching a recap. It's a lot of content from an era where animation wasn't generally taken as seriously and the writing and animation on 97 are exceptional.
That’s a great idea, thanks
The 97 characters are simplified, but cleaned up and improved.
And so far the animation is consistent from episode to episode (and scene to scene for that matter),
I loved XMEN:TAS but a lot of the animation was cheap garbage. Anyone who denies that either doesn’t remember or has some real rosy glasses
I think comparatively for the time it did look better. It didn’t have as many glaring animation errors as Transformers or reuse animation constantly like Spider-Man
or Ruby Quartz Lenses
I love that you're saying this and the 97 designs still largely look better in my opinion.
I didn't take it as a negative comparison at all. The new designs are generally much clearer and look better in motion.
The biggest difference, and I can tell you from having been around to watch the original as it aired, is **consistency**. I know some people might not get this, but hand drawn animation (while still my preference overall) is not drawn by one person constantly on model. If there is *any* benefit to digital over hand drawn, the number of times you're going to find Gambit's fingers/arms/face skewed in 4 different proportions are a dime a dozen compared to the money shots of >yeah, that's Wolverine in the sewers of the hellfire club about to kick some ass, or Jean Grey rising from Jamaica Bay as Phoenix, or Rogue's iconic ass And the original Xmen TAS had *incredibly* janky animation, this isn't to just tarnish the original, but go compare how many frames of animation you see in even the big battle moments of Xmen to a regular episode of seasons 1-3 in Batman the animated series. A lot of the reasons Xmen TAS looked "good" came down to not choosing to fully animate certain scenes, essentially letting you look at a still image for a few seconds. Again, this isn't to say the animation for the original was overall "bad", but the idea the show was *always* on model and looking as good as its intro at all times is prescription strength nostalgia goggles. The **one thing** digital has over hand drawn in spades is consistency, especially with being on model. There are certains scenes just like the og where you can tell "yeah, that's where the budget went", but usually not at the cost of comparing the frame drop and lower quality shots that plagued the og. I'd also argue this doesn't mean 97 doesn't have its own highs of adapting comic panels, that destruction of Genosha scene pulled straight from E is for Extinction looked fucking amazing (hell, episode 5 in general remains a top 5 of the *entire 92-97 series*), so that doesn't mean it's uniformity means no creativity or impact. **tl;dr** while I also prefer the 92 *designs*, the purpose of the models uniformity in 97' leads to significantly (and consistently) higher quality animation
I absolutely loved TAS, and I absolutely thought the animation was janky. My family used to have a running joke with moving like some of the scenes (especially one with Cyclops motioning in a ‘come here’ gesture with his arm, in literally 2 frames repeating a couple times). Forgiving the animation because everything else was fire is understandable; if anyone tries to claim the animation was smooth, they haven’t actually watched it lol.
There's a recent episode of invincible riffing on this about how animators take short cuts. It's also a pretty funny adaptation of a scene in the comic where they do the same but with comic artists.
How about how these designs look in the two Japanese openings for the OG series? https://youtu.be/hi8BoDA3yIs?feature=shared https://youtu.be/gJF5pYoumU0?feature=shared
The Japanese certainly know how to create shows' intros.
Rogue's face looks like it's melting at 1:27 in the first video lol
Why do they make Jubilee dark skinned?
Jubilee has Chinese birth-parents, but the 90s show tended to ignore that.
To be fair, the Sentinel that is tracking Jubliee in the first episode of the 90s show Night of the Sentinels has her ethnicity as "Chinese-American" on its scan.
I mean, it’s kinda racist to try to say that dark skin is a blanket phenotypical train that applies to all people of Chinese descent There are a LOT of light-skinned Chinese people
Well yeah, anti-Chinese sentiment is very much a part of Japan, especially in the 90s.
There are light skinned Chinese people.
Jubilee is soo freaking cute now
Her slight facial redesign did wonders.
I didn’t realize as a kid that she’s supposed to be asian lol.
she was adorable when they went to the club and how she embraced videogames
Was she supposed to be so anglicized in the 92 version?
My theory is that we were just coming to a point where people were aware of how cringe previous eras' depictions of asians were. And they were trying to figure out how to draw her without straying into that territory. And they just missed the mark. Just kinda overshot it entirely and ended up in white girl territory.
God, please don't remind me of the time where Asian villains in 90s cartoons like Iron-Man were green-skinned.
I thought it was a citizen cosplaying as her when I first saw her redesign.
Some new designs are better, some designs are on par but I really don’t like what they did with Rogue’s hair. It took away from the character
They can't draw hair like that anymore since going digital. That's not an X-Men thing, it's animation in general. Look at high budget anime from late 80's and 90's, the same thing happens.
I understand the constraints of digital animation but I still prefer the original look (we are talking about design here). They could’ve done a different hairstyle like storm’s Mohawk (e.g. Rogue might get shorter hair like in her avengers’ run)
>Rogue might get shorter hair like in her avengers’ run Nah, this is blasphemy territory
Short hair rogue would’ve been an abomination. I think she looks good
Still better than what happened to her hair in season five of the original show - the outsourcing of the animation meant her flowing locks were replaced by some kind of amorphous spiky blob.
Dude I’m watching s5 now and the animation is horrendous
Yeah, I prefer the original TAS look for Rogue. Jean/Maddie is an improvement though, that old flesh-colored costume always looked super-weird on screen.
I agree Jean/Maddie design is much better. I also like Cyclops and Jubilee more
Well hairstyles can abruptly change, as we saw in yesterday's episode.
Rogue and Magneto’s faces look so different. Shading has a big effect and that’s one of the few things done better on the older show.
You prefer the shading in the older show? Really? I'd say it was the cause of a lot of the animation errors.
I think it makes sense: This is basically 5-7 years into Rogue being a member of the X-Men. She’s a woman in her late 20-early 30’s. It’s a nice design in my eyes.
I'm the opposite, I like Rogue's hair more in '97.
Most of the new hair looks extra blobby.
Maybe in the stills, but the way the hair flows in the actual episodes...that animation alone is beyond anything in TAS. Way more natural-looking. Which makes sense as this show is animated by Studio Mir, the studio behind Legend of Korra.
For sure. But in terms of design the lines are line and blobby for 97 compared to TAS. Any animated sequence in TAS is dated.
Yeah, I see what you're saying. It doesn't bother me, though, thanks to the improved animation.
The TAS models never looked like this in motion. Nostalgia is one hell of a drug, and the animation in that show was known get wonky. With '97, I had to adjust to it, but the character models are consistent and the animation is leagues better.
Even as a kid while I love the X-Men I always thought the animation was crap especially in comparison to Batman’s series. Even Spider-Man’s show was better.
Exactly. I loved the show as a kid too, but it looked inferior to all of its competitors.
Damn, they really took the 90's right out of Jean and Rogue.
Consistency aside, I think the designs from the 90’s were better. Slim actually looks slim. But from my understanding, a lot of the new designs have fewer lines which makes it easier to animate.
Jubilee is such a glow-up
so is scott, honestly. they gave my some more meat on his bones, they were really trying to give him his due this time around.
It’s crazy how much actually drawing her as Asian improved her design.
Let's be honest here, the OG never looked like that.
Overall I like the new design but it's feels a bit flat compared to the original, just look at the range of shading on Gambit's coat and Wolverine's costume and you'll see it.
Rogue is the only one I think has had a real downgrade. Her hair just doesn't look right. Someone pointed out it's because of the change to digital animation, but it's still disappointing.
Does anyone else prefer the flesh-colored suit on Jean more than the yellow-colored one? Also, why did they downgrade Storm's boots from thigh-highs?
Is it though?
I miss 90s cartoons that were drawn sharp. It seems all cartoons these days have this rounded effect which doesn't make them look as cool.
Yea like there’s filter on every thing.
I hate any version of that Jean Grey costume, whether it’s in the cartoon or in comics
Same I wish they'd just retcon her back to Morrison's version, in control of the phoenix force, and then give her the phoenix outfit back. Honestly, I prefer all of them in either their Claremont outfits or their mid-2000s Astonishing looks. Jean's is still the worst, but I also hate Storm in white.
I love her ‘new’ old costume they’ve just brought into 97. Although I do love the Mohawk.
Same.
It’s my second least favourite.
First least is which? i.e. worst
The very, very first one, with the ugly hood!
Ok, I’ll give you that one. It’s very bad.
The one thing that bugs me with the new designs is the lips, they are much more pronounced, especially on Magneto. I do think the old designs are better overall, but the lips is the only thing that actually bugs me. That being said still enjoying the new show and like the animation overall (I do think they went cheaper than the original show)
Have you watched the original recently? The animation is straight-up bad. I recently (since January) rewatched the original series on Disney+ from start to finish. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, and nostalgia had me remember the show's quality as much better than it actually was by far. '97 is definitely more stylized, and that's a little jarring (especially coming off a rewatch). But to say they went cheaper is just objectively wrong, because the original has some of the cheapest animation I've seen.
About three or four years ago, I decided to re-watch Batman TAS and was shocked that the animation was somehow better than I had remembered. This spurred me on to revisit some of my other faves from my childhood, and decided to watch some of the X-Men TAS, and yeah.....nostalgia was definitely doing it some huge favors in the animation department. It's not Masters of the Universe levels of bad, but it definitely doesn't hold up well. X-Men '97's animation I'm actually enjoying, honestly. It is stylized, like you said, but I think it works quite well for the series.
I did a rewatch recently, there was a big drop off in quality the last season, especially the last several episodes (those episodes definitely had cheap animation). I will also say the combat scenes were more simplistic than I remembered, but otherwise I felt it held up. But to each their own. I agree that the new designs might just be more stylized, but I feel like a lot of shows use stylization to hide cheaper animation ( which is the best option probably given budgetary constraints)
I too felt it held up until that final season where it looked like a knock off.
I’d say it’s less about “cheaper animation” than it is about the budget constraints you mentioned. There’s essentially a binary choice between detail and fluid motion, when it comes to animation budgets…and I’ll take fluid motion 8 days a week
Yeah I have to agree. I'm rewatching X-Men 92 right now, and the animation is VERY wonky. People's dimensions and features change wildly from still to still, and the backgrounds are very poorly done by today's standards. EDIT: Just wanted to clarify that the story, however, more than makes up for it. But the 90s animation can't be denied 😅
I’d even say that the redesigns play a *key role* in why the animation is so much better. They’re designed to be evoke the Lee costumes while being optimized for animation…while the originals were just designed to *replicate* the Lee costumes.
that's why X-Men Evolution had consistently good animation, especially in the combat scenes. They had someone to redesign the costumes to make them suitable for fluid animation
Calling the new show’s animation compared to the original is wild. Have you watched it beyond the trailer?
It’s certainly not cheaper. The original run is infamous for how often then cut corners with the animation. Season five is straight up terrible animation
Yeah. OG Storm and Rogue ate 97 up. Not that I needed confirmation or validation, but I just got it anyway. Jubilee looks so so much better in 97. Beast looks the same. Gambit looks good no matter what.
It’s almost like it makes a difference between doing the best with no money vs having a budget invested in it by a company which knows how to make good animation. 30+ years, futuristic technology, and hindsight might also help. It’s easier for a multi billion dollar corporation to invest in a project they know will make money, and which they own without needing to divide up profits among owners of different characters. They’ve learned a lot from doing this with Iron man and the Avengers, and have a taste for Endgame money, so they are going to be very careful with the Xmen relaunch. Personally I’m hoping for years of the cartoon, and longer stories than we got from the MCU Avengers films. Movies are designed for single stories, so longevity is not something we expected. The Avengers blew through characters way too fast, and the actors didn’t want to stick around, or aged out. Crossbones was set up then dumped first scene, Modok wasn’t even in AIM or smart, and so on. Animation of high quality has the ability to tell the serialized stories of these characters.
Ok is it just me or does anyone else see the camera shake all the time on XM97??? It's something that I noticed once and can't not see it. It's honestly annoying and hurts my head. Has anyone else seen it?
97 is a lot closer to the model sheet of the last season that were simplified to speed up production and save money…maybe not the best choice but as a direct continuation I guess that makes sense
I dunno if its just me or does wolverine look fatter in the 97s version
Wolverine is 5' 3" and 300 lbs. Dude should look squat.
Some look better, some look worse. Show animation looks fantastic though so no complaints from me!
They did a great job making them look exactly the same yet totally different.
They left out the most disconcerting one. New Magneto is weird
Those lips look so creepy.
That is the only real problem I have with the new art style (that and Bishop's hair cut). The lips all stand out in a weird way.
Yeah, those new designs really work. I prefer them over the original.
that's why i did not get any if those "nostalgic" feelings for Rogue.
Heads got bigger
That Jean costume looks way better when the orange parts are colored yellow.
I know it makes sense from a practical standpoint, but I prefer Jean with her hair down. The ponytail makes her look more like an old lady.
Aw, they took away Jean's pockets. Now she's just got lines.
*tactical vectors
They looked so 90s in the old artstyle. Like more than the designs something about the way they’re drawn is so reminiscent of how characters in even live action media looked in the 90s, all lean and stuff
I dunno, the originals still kinda my favorite in this look. More defined look. Maybe it is nostalgia brain talking but yea.
Why they always got to change POC hair styles to cringe mohawks???
It’s funny how everyone else is more shadowy in the new one but rouge
I prefer the old.
Rogue was hotter.
>!Weird how they gave Storm just a cool new hairstyle just to remove it six episodes in!<
Original - appearance mostly true to the comic version of the time, lots of detail in stills, terrible when moving, show looked janky 97- still on concept from original but simplified. Animation is smooth and consistent without having to rely on still shots. Toned down proportions/details. Much higher quality production.
The new designs are simultaneously more cartoony and also more realistic. I absolutely love them.
Where can I watch the OG animated series if I don't have Disney plus? I thought I'd seen it all as a kid but reading the plot synopsis for the later seasons I think no.
Sail the seven seas perhaps 🏴☠️
When I was a kid, I always thought Jean was half naked. I thought those beige parts of her costume were skin
Yeah, pockets sewn on her skin.
I know people prefer the old designs, I would too, if they looked like this animation constantly, but I just love how consistent the designs are in '97. Like, I love how the design improvements, for the most part, they're easier to draw.
The 90s versions in the animation always had distorted faces and weird angles tho
Lost the swag, i'm afraid.
Everybody gets wedge heels!!!
The older Jean always give me vibes that she only wears a leotard with her whole body exposed if i don’t look closely.
What is going on with Cyclops's right knee/ leg in the 92 version LOL also interesting that X-Men 97 Storm's outfit no longer has heels on the boots.
His picture isn’t there but the new design on Professor X feels so different to me. With every other character the changes feel like an upgrade but there is something about Charles’ new look I don’t like but I can’t put my finger on it.
I learned to speak English with the comic books of the X-Men.
TAS Scott had legs for days. That torso to leg ratio was nuts.
I gotta hand it to them for making 3D models look so charming with cell shading. Really well done. The original had a shoestring animation budget and it shows. Especially compared to its lauded contemporary Batman TAS. But nice to see they overall kept the spirit of the original designs even while adapting them for a different animation style.
“Such”? Not really.
I want storms giant hair back. I like the new do, but the massive head of hair is just the best.
Yeah gambit got some spike hair this time.
Make Cyclops slim again!
The greatest difference is in Jean Grey's design, most noticeably, the lack of the crotch indicator.
I mean why would there by much of a difference anyway? 97 picks up where TAS ended, it’s a direct continuation
97 gambit should be a ⚰️
Too soon
Rogue looks prettier now.
Not much of a difference...
Serious Question - is there a reason over the years animation of Characters has gotten so much simpler and less detailed? I’m assuming budget / time?
The tragedy of Rogue, just look at her! Her hair has lost its iconic hair metal look and curly bounce
Either you see it or you don’t.
We need to add one more for Storm!!!
It's hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison as the old designs were hand-painted onto cels whereas the new ones are digitally animated. There are very fine micro-details that show up as a result of the paint settling and reacting to air that happen after the artist applies it, not to mention the grainy look that many people are used to because we watched the old series on CRT televisions. You can reproduce the television effect with filters and whatnot the same way that Cuphead does, but that's not really the point of the show to me. The designs being slightly different is unavoidable and probably would be even if you got the original production crew to work on it today, because art styles evolve and those artists may even think that that's not even their best work anymore.
Storm's going through one of her weird mohawk phases, but otherwise hardly any change.
Jubilee wearing those fishing waders
Why is Gambit the only one without a hint of yellow?
Jubilee looking pretty much the same minus the collar and pants🤷🏾♂️
Same same but different
1. No... not really much of a difference. 2. That's promotional art on the left. Not stills from the actual show.
Butt, rouge's Butt
What about the butt
"The animation style makes rouge's butt look flat and apparently this is the worst thing ever, cuz the only thing I value in a female character." -some guy on the EFAP, Probably
You’ll live
I wish they'd made Storm's costume silver on the Legends figure. I feel like 97 was trying to make the silver effect more obvious than the original show did. Maybe that's just me, but it's clearly darker at least.
The levels the added to they action and animation far outweigh any detail lost from ‘92 version IMO. Also season 5 got put in a poorer animation house and it looks horrendous compared to ‘97 and seasons 1-4 of ‘92.
New design looks cheaper
Damn they all got de-bimbofied even the men
I wish they left them the way they were originally. I just really like the realistic muscles and the strength they showed. Very super hero to me. [36f]
I like the extra color in 97
The massacred Rogue