Inbetweener
Posted:
Dec 27, 2011, 2:02 PM
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Ned's Newt: Fresh or Rotten (e.g Hit or Miss)
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This is a follow-up to my Blinky Bill post, here goes.
Have Anyone of you guys seen Ned's Newt, a cartoon from 1996 (Wikipedia says this was a dubbed German original import that was originally seen on a German channel called Pro Seiben from 1993 to 1995, i think that is exactly more than likely to be defiently false), i have posted a few pictures, be sure to click on the attachment bars to see them.
And here's a couple of episodes, be sure to copy and paste on the URL bar to see them.
Season 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ_Qtxm1yps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnNnFzUy0gE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HUqQ4fHkX4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7BKpckFEw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LElNuVrwOE&feature=related
Season 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y-lId3IQO0&feature=related (hey, almost the new year coming)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN8EnVDj6ns&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtAF9UhDShw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aNJiMqDkSo
Season 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q2dXnyP8E8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjM1LhTYqyU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmWY4vHKnpM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEFqS8IFxKQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzE6shpgzN0&feature=related
And if you guys notice any diffrences in the animation, it's because Season 1 was handled by Phillipine Animation Studios Inc (often called PASI), Season 2 was handled by RG Prince Films of India (with Studio B Productions of Vancover, B.C handling the pre-production) and Season 3 was by Wang Film Productions, i believe, despite what the credits say.
I will have more to say on this later, let's hear your thoughts.
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Everything the Light Touches Is Our Kingdom.
ROAR!, Confound it, Kiddies, Don't miss my Cartoon Show! - King Leonardo.
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Inbetweener
Posted:
Dec 28, 2011, 2:12 PM
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Re: Ned's Newt: Fresh or Rotten (e.g Hit or Miss)
[In reply to]
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Okay here's more of my info and soon later a review.
Okay this show in a nutshell reviewing that of the intro, It's about a Kid named Ned whose last name is Flemkin who had a desire to have a pet, so he goes to the pet store and sees what animal he could get, the pet store owner sees him and convinces him to get a newt, Ned buys the newt and rushes home and finds out that he does nothing and just sits there all day, Ned finds out that he has been conned and suckered and returns to the store angry, only to find out that he has not been suckered and also the pet store told him that he also forgot to get the zippo food for the newt, but he warns him - NOT TOO MUCH or ELSE!.
Later, Ned feeds the Zippo to the newt, and this time the Newt actually does something, when Ned is all asleep, the newt gets out of his bowl and tips over the Zippo can and eats a huge mouthful, after this he starts to become extremely huge and six feet tall and then as we know it, walks down to the living room and watches TV, Ned wakes up and finally realizes that feeding the Newt too much was no mistake after all and the newt calls himself Newton and mayhem ensures.
Actually, I've once read that Newton from this show is a poor man's Genie specifically from Disney's Aladdin, but actually, in fact, he much more resembles the Red Guy from Cow and Chicken and even a bit of Hobbes from Calvin and Hobbes
and also the resemblance of the Red Guy is more than likely to be NOT confidential because it looks like Dave Feiss was involved in the intro considering some parts of the animation in the intro look and move like some of his stuff, then again i may be wrong and not exactly sure who did the intro?
Okay, enough said, here's the review of the first episode which is based on the intro.
Out with the Old, in with the Newt.
Story *Warning Spoilers Ahead* : Again, based off the intro, but i will mention it anyway, It all starts with Ned having a daydream about which pet he should get, like if he should get an elephant, but his daydream stops with the Juicer and Sharon (Ned's Mom) is telling Eric (Ned's Dad) to peel in more carrots for the juicer, Ned then asks his Dad for his Allowance and starts rushing off to the pet store to find which pet he should get, as he arrives to the pet store there are choices for him from exotic to not so exotic, and then he finds something for sale and CHEAP and it turns out to be - You guessed it- a Newt for sale, and the Pet owner finds that his price range is only a little above the range of what the newt actually costs and so he lets him have it, but Ned comes back and tells him that he doesn't do anything and that he wants his money back untill the Pet Owner for free gives him the Zippo for Newt, later Ned feeds him a little of the Zippo and this time the Newt actually does something when Ned is asleep, and gobs down several mouthfuls of Zippo and grows into a giant of six feet tall and heads downstairs and later Ned finds out that the six feet tall giant is his newt and mayhem insures as per usual, i will stop here now and all i can say is dig that crazy jabs at the Flintstones and Bill and Ted (hey Hanna Barbera both had involvement in two of them before so maybe this was a jab directly at Hanna Barbera in general, because if it was subliminally i'm surprised they didn't reference The Jetsons and Top Cat or even Scooby Doo either) in the beginning.
Animation: Well, as this was based off of scenes in the intro, the actual animation in this episode compared to the intro is actually pretty stale and kind of crude, plus as how the digital execution (directly on video) looked in the intro, i must say the digital execution here feels and functions EXACTLY like that offensive clunky primitive British computer system that Hanna Barbera used on their shows beginning in around 1982 or so (you know, it is actually unknown exactly when H-B first used it, the earliest i exactly know of was in 1984 on some of the later Scooby Doo episodes with Scrappy Doo and the only other main human characters were Shaggy and Daphnie, Fred and Velma are almost nowhere in sight, i think Velma was a much better secondary character for Shaggy than Daphnie, i will save that for another post if you don't mind), about just as rough, blurry, jagged and extremely out of focus, especially in some shots with newton, by 1996, this exact kind of execution was exactly and extremely old hat by that time (hey, the Hey Arnold intro was made in 1996 and while that was made using the USAnimation system, that was HOW cartoons of that exact period, cel or digital, should have apparently looked at the time), and this is actually how something like that awful Pink Panther cartoon with Matt Frewer in it's first year (1993) would have looked had THAT actually used some sort of Digital execution (and no cel whatsoever) and being reminded, Johnny Bravo was the last of the Hanna Barbera productions to use that British system and THAT was from 1993, so maybe the German release date from 1993-1995 was correct after all and that this was a German original just like another Nelvana toon, Donkey Kong Country was originally a dubbed French original, but then again i belive way too much from Wikipedia, when you can't really trust everything from there and a saying to don't believe everything you read, don't i  .
anyway, Digital problems aside, the animation here was done by Philippine Animation Studios Inc. obviously, as the name implies, are from the Philippines, not really much history is known of these guys execpt that they are still around and active still, in the animation itself, the line quality here is really thin, which also doesn't really help to combat the crumminess of the digital execution i mentioned previously, it only makes the lines rather almost non-existent, anyway, THAT aside, PASI seemed to go kind of creative with the lines here, seeing that almost all the outlines are colored correspondingly to the specific objects here, including the characters, I've said quite enough now.
Voices: Well, Harland Williams (no relation to Robin Williams who did the Genie from Disney's Aladdin) who was noted as a Celebrity (exactly like Alec Baldwin, who is also a talented voice artist, did one of the bikers in the Spongebob Movie) stand up comedian stars here as Newton, and Newton's character in turn calls back to his several of his stand up routines and the voice sounds exactly like Martin Short from the Cat in The Hat Knows A Lot About That, as for the other characters, Ned is by Tracy Moore and i must say with that in terms of voice acting it's one of the oldest cliches in the book having a female voice a little kid, especially a boy, and it's very rare, although possible in existence, to have a man voice a little girl, it's pretty rare in the business to have a male voice actor who can actually really crank out little kid voices, as far i know one, there was Daws Butler who would crank out little kid voices flawlessly, although Mr. Butler himself had a specific range enough to tackle such voices, that guy was REALLY amazing.
Theme Tunes/Sound: Okay, now the overall sound, lets start with the sound effects, all i can say now is that mainly in the 1990s the sound effects in the Nelvana cartoons were extremely reconizible even as a kid, I've noticed, this show also utilized a few Hanna Barbera sound effects (such as the ones with the bongo feet mainly on Newton) and as for the theme tunes, going as they were credited often as title themes, Pure West must've had marquee value back then, and who were they, as a matter of question, they also did the main music for this and the rather shameless forgettable Donkey Kong Country cartoon and of course the title theme for the seemingly unwatchable Blazing Dragons (that theme song in the intro and Sir Blaze in general is enough to drive someone away from watching, plus it's a pale dead shadow of that Garfield Nine Lives segment titled Court Muscian and also API's King Arthur cartoon which had a much, much better theme song and also much better visuals and animation too)
Overall Execution: Well, this is Season 1 and the very first episode and here it seems that in most episodes of season one, Ned often gets in trouble with his parents namely his Dad, i'm done this review, so let's hear your thoughts of this and also this show in general.
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Everything the Light Touches Is Our Kingdom.
ROAR!, Confound it, Kiddies, Don't miss my Cartoon Show! - King Leonardo.
(This post was edited by Lion55 on Dec 28, 2011, 2:12 PM)
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Inbetweener
Posted:
Dec 31, 2011, 3:10 PM
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Re: Ned's Newt: Fresh or Rotten (e.g Hit or Miss)
[In reply to]
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Okay, it's new year's eve and tomorrow is going to be the new year, so for this special occasion, another review.
New Year's Ned.
Story *Warning Spoilers Ahead*: It all starts with a Flashback in the hospital, where Ned is born on New Year's Day, then years and years pass in the flashback and then we go to the present where Ned is a big kid, and then it again fades into winter where we see Newton clumsily attempting to ski, with plenty of hi-jinks ahead and Ned, who is also attempting to ski, and also Newton then crashes into a building, which is the building of the Hospital Ned's birth took place and then it fades to home, were Ned and Newton are bandaged in wounds, and Ned later calls the hospital on the phone and then tells Newton a long story and tells him his story of him being born nine years ago in the hospital on new year's day at 5:02 pm, and Newton thinks today is New Year's Day and says "Happy Birthday Ned", and shows him 9 belated gifts including the 1970s Jackson Five (OH, gimme a break  ) and the cast of Seinfeld (my goodness, is this ever going to age badly?).
And then Newton convinces him to tell him his story, we are then cut straight into a flashback (i'm not going to write about Ned's narration thank you very much), were Ned's parents see their newborn child and call him Ned, and Ned becomes the official town baby of the year, then we cut back to Newton finding out that he was indeed in the newspaper, then we cut back to Ned about that he had to play the New Year's Pageant which was not a problem when he was 2, but now that he is fully grown, he is afraid he will become a laughing stock of his friends and pretty much that what this whole story pretty much concerns anyway, so watch the rest of the episode to find out.
Animation: Well, the digital execution here must have really improved in the second season, due to Mercury Filmworks handling the digital execution here as it as not as blurry and non-existient, but itself, in many ways, the animation here is actually much, MUCH worse than the previous season, not just the fact that it was jerky, rough, profoundly choppy and extranousely crude and really, really lousy and cheap, but this actually affected the character designs, especially Newton, here the character designs are really, really lazy, sloppy and actually pretty hideous, not to mention lousy too, what's also strange is that same thing than can be said for the animation too.
Problems aside, The terrible linework here (yuck, way TOO thick and extremely rough, that what i call bad linework in any sense of the world, it can give someone a terrible rash, you know what i mean?) clearly doesn't help matters and also if the animation and art change was of any indication besides RG Prince Films of India (wait a second, i think that studio was also involved in pre-production mainly, not the other way around, or maybe i was right the first time, because as far i've seen, in the 1990s, Indian studios weren't really common in handling the animation in the American shows at the time, it was mostly just others in it's place.), it was because Studio B Productions (Sonic, D'Myna Leagues, Yvon of the Yukon) was clearly involved in the animation as well, and based on the former drawing traits i've seen from shows such as Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and What About Mimi, i think the actual animation here was actually exactly handled by Tawain based - Hong Ying Animation Company, which was founded in 1986.
Voices: Just Harland Williams as Newton and Tracey Moore as Ned Flemkin as per usual, i have not covered the voices for the other characters, but i will anyway, that is defiently Tony Daniels doing the voice of the Mayor, whom did a pretty darn good job on, and Ned's Parents are done by Carolyn Scott and Peter Keleghan respectively.
Theme Tunes/Sound: Again, the theme tunes are handled, as per usual by Pure West.
Overall Execution: Well, as i watched the enitre thing, i must say the entire whole thing here feels extremely crude and unpolished, it's like the writers (Andrew Nicholls and Darrell Vickers) were rushing and thought they were minutes and hours tight and short and so what they ended up with was an extremely crude and rather incomplete product, and all Season 2, the Animation here is really, really ugly and extremely wretched, not to mention really lifeless and cardboard, well actually it reminds me of the worst of the animation in Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures (and even that crummy Scooby Doo Arabian Nights special from 1992) in a rather different way (Ironically, Hong Ying was intially a mere subcontractor to Wang Film Productions who did provide the animation for Mighty Mouse and the Scooby Doo Arabian Nights special).
Let's hear your thoughts.
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Everything the Light Touches Is Our Kingdom.
ROAR!, Confound it, Kiddies, Don't miss my Cartoon Show! - King Leonardo.
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