Let's see…took ’em about two days to get the 50k…if they can keep bringing in donations at a pace like that, they should have the 200k by this time next week.
Have any clues been dropped about possible content? While I'm sure a sequel series will have a ton of nods to the old show, the pitch will probably have a better chance if it's accessible to newcomers.
I…really, really hope they change that. A new general look/aesthetic for the show is fine and all, but that reeks of going to the AzBats level of '90s Redesigns. God, I’d hate to see what Callie would look like with this style.
>>237643 Keep in mind it's specifically labelled as a night scheme. The army surplus nano fibers in the outfit are likely capable of shifting colors to blend in with environments.
When you look at the original suit design, it was simple enough: blue suit, red straps, a little bit of black-and-red trim here and there. This new design reeks of “overdesigning” for the sake of it to me. I could get past the shoulderpad and jetpack additions if the base design of the suit itself were a little simpler.
But hey, this is just me and my personal opinion on cartoon aesthetics talking.
Another part of it being that the original designs were pretty much just a blue pilot's jumpsuit. Anything like the Glovatrix was separate, and the jetpack was just a glider they sometimes had.
I dunno, they got an anime studio to do Season 2, and it worked out pretty okay, but somehow these designs look like they're making fun of the 90s.
>>237642 A bit too radical and not enough squadron for my taste. I get that it's a violent and over-the-top show, but I have a hard time seeing crack wry jokes about how awful their lives are as vigilantes while dressed like that. Maybe they'll say something about looking like the guys who paints themselves up in the team's colors at a sports game.
>>237650 Going with a "nineties forever" aesthetic could be a way of making the series stand out in the marketplace and rekindle memories. One of the things I liked about Scooby Doo: Mystery Inc was how it depicted the modern day as if the seventies never ended (woodgrain-cover laptops and the like) and I don't think any media has done that with the nineties yet.
I dunno, the eighties revival has become this institutionalised behemoth crushing all other decades under its neon fist while in the meantime I've been waiting patiently for my nineties revival to get going, and so far we've had the Stone Roses getting back together, TFI Friday's one-off TV special and this Kickstarter. That's rubbish, that is.
>>237654 I don't think >>237642 looks all that 90s to me. Maybe in terms of comics, but for a cartoon it looks more early 00s. And I'm not sure I need a SWAT Cats that listens to Green Day's American Idiot.
Did the '90s even have an overriding aesthetic to cling to other than maybe “fuck the ’80s”? I mean, part of the reason the ’80s nostalgia works so well is because a lot of media from that decade has distinct and memorable aesthetics—neon lights, over-the-top action heroes, synthesizers, that sort of thing. We can point to those things, recognize them as distinct “1980s” markers, and use them in parodies/homages of ’80s media (e.g. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon).
If someone were to do a parody of ’90s media in the vein of Kung Fury or Blood Dragon, what would it look, sound, and “feel” like? What tangible and reproducible aesthetics define the ’90s in a way where someone can point to some form of media and say “That is totally a ’90s thing”?
>>237660 From what I can tell, a lot of it was lingering stuff from the 80's in terms of style and also actual reruns, but with slightly better computers and a rising prevalence of ironic humor. When I think 90's cartoons (other than SWAT Cats as it already was, which presumably will have an influece), I think X-Men, Batman: The Animated Series, Mighty Max, WB Kids, and a lot of educational programming.
...Wait, Kid's WB had an online component that existed until this year? Why do things keep dying right before or after I notice them?
>>237660 It seems split along a bunch of things. I can think of grunge, flannel, and guitars in one corner, TOTALLY RADICAL in another, and of course everyone knows about the 90s era of comic edginess that kind of bled into some of the cartoons too.
If there is any real ’90s aesthetic, I’d place my bet on “edginess”. Comics, music, television, movies, and even fuckin’ pro wrestling all started moving towards the “shock for shock’s sake” output that gave us Jerry Springer, Howard Stern, WWE's Attitude Era, DC and Marvel’s respective dips into “edgy” material, gangsta rap, and so on. By the time the 2000s rolled around, the “edge” had moved out significantly further than it had when the ’80s rolled into the ’90s.
I think part of the nineties aesthetics have to take in the kind of gravitation to geometric design and clean gray shades that came from the architecture and interior decoration considered professional. The kind of stuff they saw as cutting edge technology back then. There was a lot of office aesthetics that were considered earmarks for technology, as a sort of counter to the RADICAL social design.
It's a sort of growth from designs started in the eighties, but slimmed down and brightened for the nineties.
>>237664 The diversification of media and sub-cultures in the '90s does make it hard to pin down a distinctly '90s "style", but if we're sticking with kids' stuff I do agree there was a tangible shift towards "XTREEEME!" concepts and trappings. More specifically, the co-opting of rebellious imagery by corporations and the establishment to either sell brands or push conformist messages (y'know, "radical dudes don't do drugs", that sort of thing). Kids my age didn't buy it because the stuff being pumped out was always a bit too sleek and colourful (before the grime filter came down in the noughties). It was like a game we all played with the brands being shoved on us, where we took pride in being smarter than the media we consumed and yet still consumed it, which is where the "irony" part comes in.
