(completely subjective opinions, as always!)



RDK (S2 onward, half of the episodes): best one to me. Draws by hand on paper, loosely follows the style of the boarders who worked on the episodes, their way to draw characters and their expressions is my favorite. Since it’s frame by frame with no tweening or Flash happening all the movements and poses have more “weight”.

Mercury Filmworks (S1 ep.1-5): second ranked. Extremely smooth and detailed animation, great camera work and lights, unfortunately the characters were drawn a bit closer to the style of the studio (compare it with some other of their shows) than to what they look like in boards. This made for some great expressions and reaction pics, but for faces that I feel like fit the characters less, at times, compared to what we got later.

Sugarcube (S2 onward, half of the episodes): like Mercury it animates using “flash puppets”, so great consistency at the cost of more stiff poses and expressions, and less “weight” (compare a RDK hug with a Sugarcube’s one and you should see what I mean). Great with lights and colors though.



Toon City (S1 ep.6-13): like RDK drawn frame by frame, with no flash tweening, but all in digital. At its best it looked extremely good, with characters drawn more based on what the boarders did, but unfortunately it was at its best very rarely, and too often delivered out of model characters with proportions wildly changing from one scene to another. Far from being outright bad, but I think it was a last minute choice made when Mercury couldn’t work on Star anymore, and it shows.