Image:SuperHeroHype

Oh gosh.

I really hate this.

Star Wars Resistance is the new Star Wars show following The Clone Wars and Rebels. The Clone Wars was good television, expanding the lore and giving Anakin the back story he deserved. Rebels was okay, good at some points, bad at others.

But, there’s one thing these shows all have in common.

They all look terrible.

The first two series used a horrible version of 3D animation, which is hilarious as it’s coming from the company that owns Pixar, the premier 3D animation studio in the world. The characters moved strange, in this wobbly jaunt that made it look as though the animators have never seen a human before. Sort of like how the Flash moves in Justice League.

The textures looked silly. Any kind of hair looks really bad. One of the character looked like he had a sentient octopus on his head. Don’t get me started on episode that had wookies in it. They looked like castoffs from old Gumby.

The new show somehow got worse. Instead of the cheap 3D animation they went with cheap knockoff 3D anime ripoff. It looks like a show Nick Jr. made in 1994.

I hate it so much. There’s no excuse except that they wanted it to be made for milk money. There are high school drama clubs with bigger budgets.

It’s also Disney, the company that made its name making animated movies.

There’s also an argument that this is a kid show so why would someone care how carefully rendered it is. But that hardly holds water, just because it’s for kids doesn’t mean it needs to look like something two animators slapped together on their lunch break.

Dreamworks and Netflix combined with Guillermo del Toro to make Trollhunters. Even though its for kids, it still has the same high quality animation as their feature films.

One of the greatest animations of the last 20 years is Avatar: The Last Airbender and they managed to still do it with amazing, finely rendered 2D animation.The creator even managed to bring the same great animation to Voltron, his newest series on Netflix.

They have all of these options and yet they settle with a product that would look better done as sock puppets.

I realize this sounds silly, and most people would wonder why a grown man would care about the animation stylings of a children’s television show. But animation was my introduction to art. I had The Lion King on VHS and I would fast forward to the extra’s at the end. Here, it would show the animators creating the characters, the sketches from live animals, the long hours at their desk, the hundreds of drawings and paintings. It was the first time I realized what could be made by human hands.

This is why I care. Animation shouldn’t be used to get entertainment to children in the cheapest way possible. It should used because of what it is.

Moving art.