Joy she/her Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 If The Stormlight Archive ever became a TV series, which would you prefer: animation or live action? I'm curious what people think of this. Personally, I'd rather see the Stormlight Archive as an animated series. A big part of the appeal of Roshar for me is the worldbuilding: the spren, the highstorms, the Surgebinding, the bizarre plants and animals. I think animation would do a much better job of capturing these elements than CGI; it would really convey the magic of the world. On the other hand, live action might be better for character-driven moments, of which the story contains plenty. So I'm a little torn, even though I think I'd ultimately prefer animation. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lunamor she/her Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 Yeah, I’d go with animation too. It would be extremely difficult and expensive to accurately portray SA as live action, and I feel like they would have to cut a lot of stuff out. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pagliacci he/him Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 5 minutes ago, Joy said: If The Stormlight Archive ever became a TV series, which would you prefer: animation or live action? I'm curious what people think of this. Personally, I'd rather see the Stormlight Archive as an animated series. A big part of the appeal of Roshar for me is the worldbuilding: the spren, the highstorms, the Surgebinding, the bizarre plants and animals. I think animation would do a much better job of capturing these elements than CGI; it would really convey the magic of the world. On the other hand, live action might be better for character-driven moments, of which the story contains plenty. So I'm a little torn, even though I think I'd ultimately prefer animation. Why do you feel live action would better serve the character driven moments? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joy she/her Posted May 12, 2019 Author Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 6 minutes ago, Pagliacci said: Why do you feel live action would better serve the character driven moments? Lots of the story happens inside characters' heads and wouldn't directly translate into a TV show. Good acting could help bridge this gap. (Good animation could, too, of course; I'm not saying live action is necessary, just that it's potentially useful.) I personally would love to see some particular scenes in live action—Dalinar's breakdown when he finally remembers the Rift comes to mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zelly Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 Animation all the way. Well animated fight scenes (looking at you Sword of the Stranger) and setting/scenery (hi Lion King opening sequence) are just amazing. It's a story but there's like a layer of art tossed over it that I think live action productions often fail to catch or just over spam visuals with special effects. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karger he/him Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 I would prefer live action if it were actually possible to do the series justice in that setting. Otherwise animation. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Invocation Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 For the reasons that I don't believe we could do the setting and character/casting justice through liveaction, I'd say animation. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wander89 he/him Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 If it were possible to do some CGI/practical effects and have a great live-action show then sure. I just feel that animation can sometimes take away from some great moments because of what we are seeing on screen and might drive back the popularity of the series. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aftersnoon18 Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 I think that live action would actually be easier than it may seem, at least for Way of Kings. Way of Kings doesn’t have all of the Radiant CGI necessities (except Szeth, who mainly just runs on walls, which would just require a bit of magic with the sets), and it mainly is about the characters themselves. Also, the Shattered Plains is the main location of the book, and that would be easy enough to CGI into a desert location. The harder CGI would begin in Words of Radiance, and I suppose I might be biased, but I believe that with the recent success of things like Game of Thrones, the Stormlight Archive could be a very popular live action movie/series. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karger he/him Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 4 minutes ago, aftersnoon18 said: I think that live action would actually be easier than it may seem, at least for Way of Kings. Way of Kings doesn’t have all of the Radiant CGI necessities (except Szeth, who mainly just runs on walls, which would just require a bit of magic with the sets), and it mainly is about the characters themselves. Also, the Shattered Plains is the main location of the book, and that would be easy enough to CGI into a desert location. The harder CGI would begin in Words of Radiance, and I suppose I might be biased, but I believe that with the recent success of things like Game of Thrones, the Stormlight Archive could be a very popular live action movie/series. Significant amounts of WoK are set in Kharbranth which would be a bit harder but in general I think you are correct. However would an audience sit through such a complicated story without the nudity and violence that Game of Thrones always offers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aftersnoon18 Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 1 minute ago, Karger said: Significant amounts of WoK are set in Kharbranth which would be a bit harder but in general I think you are correct. However would an audience sit through such a complicated story without the nudity and violence that Game of Thrones always offers? I would say that nudity in Game of Thrones has significantly decreased in favor of the focus on political games, of which The Stormlight Archive has a lot. In response to the violence, I think there’d be plenty of violence to go around with both Kaladin and Dalinar’s storylines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karger he/him Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 17 minutes ago, aftersnoon18 said: I would say that nudity in Game of Thrones has significantly decreased in favor of the focus on political games, of which The Stormlight Archive has a lot. In response to the violence, I think there’d be plenty of violence to go around with both Kaladin and Dalinar’s storylines. I will bow before your obviously greater game of thrones knowledge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Winds Alight she/her Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 With huuuuuuuuge amounts of money to get the CGI right, like, really really right, then live action would be cool. Otherwise, I'm for an animated series, partly also because then we wouldn't have the problem of aging actors. If life action, then please no sooner than at least 7-8 books in. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
galendo Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 To be honest, I wouldn't watch either unless -- maybe -- if it got really good reviews, since I just don't see the meat of the story adapting well to a visual medium. But I'm pretty certain that an animated series would turn out better than a live-action series of similar budget level, since one can animate spren and Stormlight and Everstorms and similar much better than any CGI/special effects could manage. Though stuff like Sadeas' warcamp and the Shattered Plains would be probably be better in live action. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SwordNimiForPresident the sword/that sword Posted May 12, 2019 Report Share Posted May 12, 2019 Live action if they could get the budget for it. I’ve never much liked anime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Use the Falchion Posted May 13, 2019 Report Share Posted May 13, 2019 8 hours ago, Winds Alight said: With huuuuuuuuge amounts of money to get the CGI right, like, really really right, then live action would be cool. Otherwise, I'm for an animated series, partly also because then we wouldn't have the problem of aging actors. If life action, then please no sooner than at least 7-8 books in. This exactly. If a VA passes away, quits, or something else happens where they need to get a replacement, its a lot easier to do when you hear a voice rather than hear a voice AND see a face. As others have mentioned, actions scenes also work better too animated in this case. Animation can give a certain amount of...weightlessness/limitlessness to the action that most live actions shows can't. For example, the fight scenes in Star Wars: The Clone Wars are some of the most impressive stuff in the entire franchise, but very few (if at all any) of them would translate well to live action. The same can be said for Kaladin's fights with Szeth, or Szeth's training as a Skybreaker or Szeth during the end of Oathbringer...basically all the fights with Szeth... A more extreme reaction would be the bending in Avatar: The Last Airbender versus the Movie That Which Will Not Be Named. Second is fan art. I've noticed that animation gets a lot more fan art than most live action shows. Or at least the cartoons I've checked out. Fan art is a great way to spread the series, and while Tumblr is a ghost-town, Twitter and Reddit are still going strong. If fan art spreads far enough in twitter, it'll get more people to check out the show faster. This is not to say that live action shows don't have fan art. They do and it's great; but larger portion of it seems to come from portraits of characters rather than fan-inspired events and drawn memes.* Third is the believability of the world (or whatever the phrase is you're thinking of that I can't at the moment). Roshar is a very, VERY strange place. It's strange in terms of fantasy, it's strange in terms of the Cosmere, and it'll be even stranger on screen. So in a place where we're asking a lot of our audience (who may be primed for more of a gritty, down-to-earth Game of Thrones type of show), I think animating the world would help take the burden off the audience. Cartoons are weird after all, and can do weird things in them. It wouldn't be too much to question the multicolored hair or the giant swords in a cartoon. But in live action? The critics and glasses-pushers would come out swinging. Or so I fear. Overall I think that Stormlight should be animated because it saves everyone a lot of trouble overcoming that first step and potential VA disasters down the line. *fan art can also lead to giant amounts of shipping and Shipping Wars if not unchecked, and those can get UGLY. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turin Turambar Posted May 13, 2019 Report Share Posted May 13, 2019 17 hours ago, Use the Falchion said: *fan art can also lead to giant amounts of shipping and Shipping Wars if not unchecked, and those can get UGLY. Call me naive, but why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Invocation Posted May 13, 2019 Report Share Posted May 13, 2019 9 minutes ago, Turin Turambar said: Call me naive, but why? Doxxing, death threats, people taking some art out of context or not understanding certain elements of color theory, crack ships that people insist you're a bad person if you don't support, stuff like that. It gets bad. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rainier Posted May 13, 2019 Report Share Posted May 13, 2019 (edited) For expense, I'll just point out that animators and animation isn't cheap, either. I'm all for animation, personally, but that's not a guarantee that it will be cost savings. However, that doesn't matter to me as much as... On 5/12/2019 at 5:36 PM, Use the Falchion said: For example, the fight scenes in Star Wars: The Clone Wars are some of the most impressive stuff in the entire franchise Genndy Tartakovsky, director of many animated shows, including The Clone Wars. This is the man I want adapting my favorite fantasy novels into animated TV Shows and movies. Another great opportunity in animation is the ability to have voice actors that don't match their character like (Tartakovsky's) Samurai Jack who is voiced by Phil Lamarr, or in Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks where both Huey and Riley Freeman (young boys) are voiced by Regina King (woman). But, until we see a big-budget animated show actually enter the mainstream and do well, we're going to see nothing but GoT clones. It will take a real sea-change to get this off the ground, or a trailblazer to show it can be done. Edited May 14, 2019 by Rainier 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truthless of Shinovar he/him Posted May 13, 2019 Report Share Posted May 13, 2019 I would love some Avatar:TLA style animation, I think that would look so cool, I can totally see all the Roshar stuff like that 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormgate he/him Posted May 14, 2019 Report Share Posted May 14, 2019 Animation. One of my biggest problems with live action superhero TV shows is that they use their powers far less than they probably would in real life, just because they have a limited special effects budget. And with all the spren and Surges and the obligatory highstorms going around, that would require a big budget to do it justice. I think an Avatar: The Last Airbender take on it would be good, it has a similar type of storytelling (tackling real-life issues, changing points of view with the occasional seemingly random storyline, etc.) 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turin Turambar Posted May 15, 2019 Report Share Posted May 15, 2019 (edited) On 5/13/2019 at 2:14 PM, Invocation said: Doxxing, death threats, people taking some art out of context or not understanding certain elements of color theory, crack ships that people insist you're a bad person if you don't support, stuff like that. It gets bad. So in short, people take random stuff way too seriously? Is it possible to name a precedent Edited May 15, 2019 by Turin Turambar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Invocation Posted May 15, 2019 Report Share Posted May 15, 2019 Just now, Turin Turambar said: So in short, people take random stuff way too seriously? Is it possible to name a precedent Yes, people take stuff too seriously. This one isn't fanart, but it'll get the point across (wow I hate reddit so much but it's the best I can do on short notice): Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turin Turambar Posted May 15, 2019 Report Share Posted May 15, 2019 Thanks. So people are weird and violent. I think that sums up society. It's OK, I forgive you all. Mostly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Invocation Posted May 15, 2019 Report Share Posted May 15, 2019 1 minute ago, Turin Turambar said: Thanks. So people are weird and violent. I think that sums up society. It's OK, I forgive you all. Mostly. "People are weird and violent" is about right, yeah. Especially about this kind of stuff. Stupid primal possessive instincts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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